Qass 
Book. 




M^.'^M 



7S 



MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



BY 



_c#.#: 



^• 



WILLIAM HVHrMUEEAY, 

PASTOR OP PARK STREET CHURCH, BOSTOX. 



SECOND SERIES. 



"^1.'^^ 




BOSTON: 

JAMES E. OSaOOD AND COMPANY, 
Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 

1873. 









Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, 

BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 






University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



OOI^TEI^TS. 



SEEMOISr I. 
Modern Scepticism ; how it should be met . • 1 

SERMON II. 
The Great Conflagration, and our Duty . . 21 

SERMON III. 
Preaching the Gtospel 39 

SERMON lY. 
Characteristics of a G-reat Love .... 58 

SERMON Y. 
Power of the G-ospel to save 78 

SERMON YI. 

The Divine Nature as shown by the Divine Measure 
of Giving . .97 

SERMON YII. 
Good Health, — its Reldgious Relation , . .112 



iv CONTENTS. 

SERMON YIII. 

Reasons why so many Men in Christian Communities 
remain unconverted 128 

SERMON IX. 
Knowing G-od 149 

SERMON X. 
The Origin and Uses of Commerce . . . .167 

SERMON XI. 
Why THE Religion of New England has failed to 

CONVERT THE PeOPLB 186 



SERMON I. 

;M0DER]^ SCEPTICISM; HOW IT SHOULD BE MET. 
"And lie marvelled because of their unbelief." — MAEKvi. 6. 

I WISH to speak to you this evening touching 
the relation of Christianity to unbelief; not the 
unbelief of the Jews, but the unbelief of Americans, 
— the unbelief of New England. Men say that 
scepticism is on the increase. I doubt it myself. 
I think that error has seen its best estate in our 
country, — that it has reached, especially here in 
New England, its highest flood-mark. Its current 
henceforth will shrink, not swell ; it is already on 
the ebb. The causes of this decline are many and 
evident. I cannot now enumerate them. I will 
only say, in brief, that error at the start in this 
State was fortunate in two things : first, its leader- 
ship, — it could show a wonderful array of great 
names in its support ; and, second, it was fortunate 
in the peculiar circumstances and conditions of the 
public mind. Neither of these advantages belong 
to it to-day. It is weak in great names. It is 
.weaker yet in the conditions of the age, which is 

1 A 



2 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

positive, and cannot applaud a negative philoso- 
phy, religion, or political theory. The Christian 
religion is therefore, as I look at it, about to reap 
its heaviest harvest and win its grandest victory. 
Everything so far is hopeful ; but everything is in a 
state of transition, nothing is assured. Everything 
may be lost. Inactivity will lose it ; mismanage- 
ment of the moral forces at our disposal will lose it. 
We need to make every possible effort to impress 
■upon the country at large and people individually 
the value and blessedness of religion. The masses 
must be made acquainted with a saving faith, 
must be confirmed in their adherence to firm, con- 
servative habits and principles, or all is lost. Un- 
belief will destroy us if it be allowed to spread 
and become the fashion of the land. 

One of the first and most pressing things to do 
is to make everybody see and feel the strength 
of Christianity and the radical w^eakness of scep- 
ticism. I propose, in the few moments I have to 
devote to discussion, to contrast the two, and assist 
you to a correct estimate of those spiritual forces 
given of God in his mercy to man, but which be- 
come operative only so far as they are received 
into willing hearts. 

One thing we must not forget, namely, that 
Christianity is a fact. Its philosophy is thought 
out ; its ethics are promulgated ; its moralities are 
reduced to practice ; its predictions are fulfilled. 



MODERN SCEPTICISM ; HOW IT SHOULD BE MET. 3 

Any objection urged against it is to be regarded as 
an objection urged against an established system. 
This is the vantage-ground that the Christian re- 
ligion holds over scepticism. If one could live in 
a vacuum he might doubt that there was any such 
thing as wind, and persuade his scepticism off upon 
others ; but he would find it exceedingly difficult 
to do this when he stood with a current blowing 
against his cheek and among those who lived in 
the open air. Well, Christianity, like the wind, is 
its own proof ; it bears testimony of itself, and yet 
its testimony is true. It is seen in its effects. Its 
results are patent to all, and no objection can stand 
which ignores the powerful existence of what it 
condemns. The presence of apples in the markets 
proves that there must be orchards. 

Indeed, religion has become so intimately inter- 
woven with the people's life, so embodied in our 
institutions, it exists so little in its abstract forms 
and so fully in its concrete, that in one sense no 
objection can be brought against it. To bring an 
objection against Christianity you must object to 
the civilization it has nourished, to the political 
structure it has raised up, and to the character of 
the people whom it has educated and inspired. 
You cannot separate the tree from the fruit, the 
stream from the fountain, the fragrance from the 
flower. They stand or fall together. The blow 
aimed at the one hits both ; their censure and praise 



4 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

are alike. The sceptics of this city, when they at- 
tack the religion of New England, attack New Eng- 
land herself. Every sneer against piety is a sneer 
against your characters and mine, fellow-citizens ; 
as it is against every character inspired at all by 
religious impulses. For where and when is the 
religion of a people seen ? Is it seen in their 
creeds, their verbal statements of truth, their 
catechisms and sacred books alone ? I tell you 
nay. The religion of a people is seen and judged 
in the character of the people itself ; it is adver- 
tised in their laws, manifested in their habits, 
exemplified in their homes, published in their civil 
institutions, engrossed in the records of their juris- 
prudence. If you would see religion, to judge of 
her, go not to the churches only, look not at creeds 
and sermons ; go forth to fields and shops and 
stores and factories ; behold her in the action 
of a thousand industries which she makes possi- 
ble and directs ; enter the court of justice, and 
see her in laws honestly administered ; pass to 
the legislature, and behold her in the formation of 
statutes whose object is to equalize the burdens 
and protect the rights of all ; go down to the 
crowded mart where men buy and sell, and real- 
ize her presence in the protection of property, in 
the rectitude of individual characters ; visit the 
homes of New England, and see her in the loves, 
the sanctities, the joys of parents and children ; — 



MODERN SCEPTICISM ; HOW IT SHOULD BE IVIET. 5 

for in such places and things is the religion of a 
people really manifested. It is against these, the 
blessed results of Christianity, that all enmity to 
Christianity is to-day addressed. Whoever soils 
the fountain pollutes the stream ; whoever attacks 
religion makes war upon the results of religion. 
To sneer at piety is to sneer at that order of life, 
that class of habits, that honorable character, which 
it produces. 

This is what makes all error dangerous, and all 
irreverence deadly. I care nothing about the war 
which error may wage upon words ; words are 
valueless save as they aid us to popularize needed 
ideas. But when war is made upon religion itself ; 
when we see that the animus of the endeavor is 
not to improve the definition of terms, — not to 
revive an impotent truth, rendered so by an unfor- 
tunate expression, — not to teach a higher scholar- 
ship, but to make all scholarship useless, — then 
alarm is legitimate and counter-attack is called for. 

Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is the true state 
of the case as regards many of our modern sceptics 
and opponents of religion. Their effort is not to 
improve the verbal and actual expression of relig- 
ion, but to wipe out all religion. They hate it 
with the hatred which the carnal mind always 
feels toward spiritual forces and results. Their 
highest, their only, conception of intellectual lib- 
erty seems to be a general incredulity. They 



6 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

insist that flight is impossible save in a vacuum. 
Faith they associate with ignorance. They cannot 
conceive of a devout scholarship. The graduates 
of Harvard — I am sorry to say it — come forth 
and prove their erudition by writing essays to dis- 
prove the very impulse, to throw discredit upon 
the very faith in God and regard for man, which 
originated and for more than a century nourished 
their university. The piety which gave birth to 
Harvard is discredited at Harvard. The daughter 
denies that she ever had a mother. 

I maintain that a scholarship which denies 
more than it asserts, nay, whose very assertions 
are denials, is an imbecile scholarship. It would 
be wicked if it was not so weak. To be strong, a 
mind must be constructive. It must build, it must 
elaborate, it must fuse and unite. Coherence is 
essential to dignity. The power of God is shown 
in orderly creation, in worlds made and wisely 
governed, in planets directed, in systems adjusted 
and impelled, and in those vast constructive pro- 
cesses of energy which stand as parents to the 
universe itself. The power of God is seen in this : 
He speaks, and laws spring into existence; He 
breathes upon chaos, and it becomes inhabitable : 
He lifts his hand, and the stars begin their endless 
march. This is God, and man born in his image 
stands united to him in analogy. True greatness, 
of whatever degree, is known by its creations. Its 



MODERN SCEPTICISM ; HOW IT SHOULD BE IsTET. 7 

accomplishments are positive. It adds to, instead 
of detracting from, the bulk of the world's faith 
and works. 

I have shown you, I trust, young men, that 
religion cannot be disconnected from its results. 
Piety means character, not creed ; and every attack 
that is made upon piety is, in fact, made upon the 
character which it causes and which embodies it. 
The man who passes a dagger into my bosom 
stabs me. There is a true scepticism, — the scep- 
ticism which leads to investigation, which prompts 
wise inquiry, which searches for the truth as for a 
lost jewel, rejoicing when it has found it. That 
was the scepticism of Luther, — a scepticism which 
doubted the divinity of dead forms, of lifeless cer- 
emony, of humanly invented tradition, and felt un- 
til it found and took to its bosom the warm, vital 
truth, and by the contact was warmed into faith. 
That was the scepticism of Thomas, — a scepticism 
which demanded only the needed measure of evi- 
dence, and when this was given blossomed, like a 
bud when it has received the needed ray, into per- 
fect trust. Such doubters are God's best worship- 
pers ; their confessions live with the life of history ; 
they glorify the Eternal Father. Such scepticism 
springs from the freedom of the human mind, and 
exists in harmony with a devout spirit. But the 
scepticism of to-day — at least, the larger part of 
it — is not of this kind. It ridicules forms, it is 



8 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

true, but only that it may make the spirit they em- 
body ridiculous. It laughs at creeds, but only that 
it may deride the everlasting truths they express. 
Its effort is not to improve the imperfect expression 
of religion, but to remove religion itself from the 
minds and hearts of its worshippers. This, I as- 
sert, is its tendency, its aim, its ambition. Its first 
phase is a mild scepticism ; its second, infidelity ; 
its third, atheism. It first doubts ; it then dis- 
believes ; and finally it blasphemes. 

Such being its character and tendency, I warn 
all of you, I warn the public, against it. I pray 
God to keep all of you and the entire country from 
it. Had I the power, I w^ould send my w^arn- 
ing cry to every city, village, and hamlet of the 
land. It should ride the rising blast as the thun- 
der-gust rides the gale, warning them to flee for 
shelter to the Eock which is greater than all 
human defence. AVoe to New England in that 
day when she shall stand stripped of her ancestral 
faith; when the holy impulses of the fathers 
shall no longer swell in the bosom of her sons ; 
w^hen the sweet and solemn influences of heaven 
shall be withdrawn from us because of our un- 
belief ; and the Holy Spirit depart, grieved away 
by the general frivolity and worldliness of tlie 
popular mind. 

My friends, you may differ from me touching 
w^hat may be called the technicalities of religion, — 



MODERN SCEPTICISM ; HOW IT SHOULD BE MET. 9 

touching forms and ceremonies, and the verbal 
rendering of truth ; on these points, I say, you may 
not agree with me. But I trust we all agree in 
this : that religion is necessary ; that it is essen- 
tial to individual happiness and to society at large ; 
that from no other source than God's Holy Word can 
we derive those checks and restraints, those max- 
ims and impulses, which anchor a people to com- 
parative permanence and security ; and that with- 
out the presence of these in men's hearts and 
homes the country would descend in morality and 
decency with an ever-accelerating rapidity, until 
within the lives of only a few generations our 
land would become a den of thieves, — a den strewn 
with the bones of those slain by the outbreak of 
passions to which there would then be no restraint, 
and whose violence is seen only in barbarous lands. 
I know that some in this city call piety a delusion. 
Accept their definition, and what then ? It only 
proves that the most essential thing known to 
human government is a delusion. It only shows 
that the highest personal altitude, the most am- 
bitious attempts of the intellect, the sweetest 
moods of the soul, the highest forms of heroism, 
and the widest humanity, all come to the mind 
and breast of man in the garb of a delusion. That 
is all their epithet proves. Hail, then, to a de- 
lusion so benevolent, so exalting, so satisfactory ! 
Hail to so sweet a deceit as this, which charms 
1* 



10 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

away our troubles and makes our griefs tolerable ! 
If virtue, if honor, if popular intelligence, if love 
for man, if a wise reverence for the Deity, — if 
these all spring from delusion, then is delusion 
better than reality, and vision preferable to fact. 
The graves where our fathers and mothers sleep 
are known to us, and the chambers from which 
their spirits passed will live in recollection mth 
the life of memory. I turn these into testimony ; 
I use them as illustration. I point you to the 
graves where those fathers repose. I hold up in 
tender vision before you the chambers where those 
mothers expired. How noble their lives, filled to 
^ the brim with honorable industries ! how patient 
in disappointment, how cheerful in poverty, how 
energetic in health, how submissive in sickness ! 
And when the hour to render up the account of 
their lives unto God had come, how calmly they 
laid their industries aside, how submissively they 
yielded to the stoppage of purpose and the inter- 
ruption of plan ! The summons w^hich startles most 
found them prepared. They felt neither terror nor 
surprise. They passed from earth into heaven as 
naturally and calmly as a tide at the call of its 
father, the ocean, escapes from the pressure of the 
narrow banks and mingles its current wdth the 
waters of the mighty sea. So they passed up to 
God, sustained by faith in His Almighty Son. Can 
a delusion accomplish such a result ? 



MODERN SCEPTICISM ; HOW IT SHOULD BE MET. 11 

The answer to the sceptic, then, is first found in 
the result of Christianity as seen in the maxims of 
justice, the humane impulses, the commercial in- 
tegrity, the civil liberty, in short, in the beneficent 
civilization which distinguishes the country. And 
secondly, the answer to all his doabts is found in 
the way in which its disciples meet the supreme 
emergency of life. I point, then, first to the way 
in which its true disciples live ; and then, with 
more imperative gesture, I direct them to study the 
way in which they die. 

Men say that the religious impulse is dying out ; 
that Christianity is in a state of decadence ; that 
the ancestral faith of New England is passing 
away. If this be true, then I say that the custo- 
dians of it are to blame. Then is the ministry as 
a body derelict. Then are those whose office it is to 
fan the historic flame, to keep alive the divine 
fire, to perpetuate a faith that can ennoble life and 
glorify death, — then are these, I say, faithless to 
their holy trust, or drained of their power. For 
what other orator can bring to the support of any 
cause such a history, to the discussion of any case 
such testimony, for the defence of any truth such 
a vindication, or for the conviction of the popular 
mind such a plea, as the preacher of the gospel in 
jSTew England finds ready to his hand ? The mis- 
sionary to heathen lands must preach a gospel un- 
supported by surrounding benefits, antagonistic to 



12 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

the people's tradition, at variance with the habits 
and customs of the populace, and directly at vari- 
ance with the political structure of the government, 
be it tribal or national. Even he who labors for 
Christ on the frontiers of our own country, the 
missionary in our new States, has few accessories 
to assist his preaching. The character which shall 
by and by vindicate Christianity in that place is yet 
to be formed. The civilization which shall, after a 
while, be its best argument, is yet in its elements ; 
it has not crystallized into those diamond-like 
shapes of law and order, intelligence and culture, 
enterprise and wealth, which by and by shall pro- 
claim to all its excellency. He argues, he exhorts, 
he prays, against such odds as no 'New England 
pastor knows. Eor here the arguments for Chris- 
tianity are on every side and palpable to the eye. 
Her vindication is not found in books, but in 
everything which makes up the aggregate result 
of our two hundred years of life. The preachers 
of religion have only to point to the fields, re- 
deemed from a wilderness state by the thrift she 
inculcated; to the stupendous fabric of mercan- 
tile enterprise, whose true basis is found in the 
personal integrity of the merchants educated in 
her schools and converted in her sanctuaries ; to 
that gracious and protective liberty which, after 
centuries of experiment and change, found at last 
its true conditions of growth in pilgrim soil ; to 



MODERN SCEPTICISM ; HOW IT SHOULD BE MET. 13 

that deep-seated and ever-increasing benevolence 
which has almost even now, and shall quite at last, 
put the needed bread into every hungry mouth, 
and a roof over every wanderer's head ; — to these 
the preachers of New England can point for tes- 
timony in support of that religion which they 
proclaim. With such ample resources at their 
command, I insist that any further growth of 
scepticism in our midst will furnish a grave im- 
peachment of ministerial capacity. 

Let no preacher, let no follower of Christ, think 
that Christianity finds her only or her best vin- 
dication in books. The preacher who relies on 
intellectual fence and mental subtlety in his effort 
to defend our ancestral faith commits a blunder 
so gross that it advertises his incompetency. What 
has modern scepticism done but bewilder and 
confuse, perplex and torture ? Has it made any 
one's path wider? Has it taken envy from the 
bosom of the poor or pride from the rich ? Has 
it produced a scholarship profound enough to know 
its ignorance and to be humbled by it ? Or has 
it rather given us a class of men whose attain- 
ments are more brilliant than profound, and more 
egotistical than brilliant, — self-asserting men, 
clever essayists, pert specialists, makers of books 
to advertise themselves, men whose reputation as 
scientists is builded on bold guesses and bolder 
assertions, whose mutual disagreements and dif- 



14 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

ferences of opinion make confidence in the correct- 
ness of their conclusions the proof of a blinder 
credulity than they ever charged upon the be- 
lievers of the Bible ? What has scepticism ever 
builded or established ? What divergent interests 
has it ever brought into unity ? What strength 
has it ever imparted to human weakness ? What 
frivolity has it ever checked ? What life has it 
ever assisted to a higher holiness ? AVhat death 
has it ever cheered ? None. Nor can it. Its na- 
ture forbids the hope. A shadow cannot warm ; a 
cloud cannot emit radiance. A negation cannot 
confirm any truth. There is no positive force in 
it. Its mission is to deny. Without a house itself, 
it works away at the underpinning of other men's 
houses. For forty years it has done nothing in 
New England but disturb and deny. That is its 
history; that is its supreme achievement. Men 
say that it has won a wreath. I grant it; but 
its wreath is woven from the generous faiths it has 
blasted, and the immortal hopes it has withered. 
Men say that its brow is white and garlanded. I 
admit it; but it is white with the paleness of 
despair, and the garland which shadows it is the 
garland of death. 

My friends, let me deal plainly with you. My 
frankness is justified by the gravity of our posi- 
tion. We are living on the very edge of a great 
social revolution. Things are at too high a pitch 



MODERN SCEPTICISM ; HOW IT SHOULD BE MET. 15 

to endure. We cannot remain as we are, or go on 
as we are going in this country much longer. The 
old order of society is breaking up and going to 
pieces. New forces are making themselves felt. 
New ideas, new rules of conduct, new beliefs, 
novel and risky methods of procedure, startling 
opinions, are coming to the front. Tlie changes 
that are taking place are simply stupendous. We 
are in the midst of a revolution without knowing 
it. We are all moving together, and everything 
is moving with us, and so we have no landmark 
by which to note the velocity of our movement. 
I do not say that the motion may not be safe ; 
God grant it may be ! for if the discoveries and 
inventions of the next century shall at all 
compare with the development and progress of 
this, the earth will be a glorious or a terrible place 
in which to live. If we keep on as we are going, 
it will soon become either a heaven or a hell. I 
feel, friends, that at such a time we Cannot afford 
to part with a single conservative influence. The 
decline is so steep that we cannot detach any of 
the brakes. If materialism crowds spirituality • 
much further, we shall present to heaven and earth 
the picture of a nation wholly gross in its pur- 
poses, its energies, and its hopes. Nor is it safe. 
^ A little more dishonesty on the part of your clerks, 
merchants, and you could not do business. There 
must be a certain amount of honesty on the part 



16 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

of your agents, or checks and counter-checks are 
alike vain. A little more decadence in public 
spirit, a little more increase of the purely selfish 
element in politics, and your attempt at republi- 
can government will break down. A little more 
increase in the direction of laziness, of shirking 
in the performance of their engagement, on the 
part of the laborers of the country, and the indus- 
tries of the land will be seriously crippled. We 
are close upon the border of a state of things in 
which w^ealth can neither be honestly gained nor 
kept ; in which the relation between employer and 
employee is only a game where cunning is matched 
against cunning ; in which honesty is neither an 
honor, nor the lack of it a disgrace ; and the act 
of voting is only the privilege of electing which 
one of two unprincipled rings we prefer to be 
cheated by. 

Such being our position, the present is the 
worst time which men could select in which to 
weaken the connection between religion or any 
other conservative force and the popular mind. 
Our safety is to be found rather in making that 
connection closer and more sympathetic. If 
Christianity fails us we are undone. If the future 
of America is to be a godless future, what disas- 
ters, what calamities, what ruin, are ahead of us 1 
In thirty years they who live will see the 
beginning of another century. It is left to us to 



MODERN SCEPTICISM ; HOW IT SHOULD BE MET. 17 

decide what principles, what policies, what prac- 
tices, shall be dominant then. It is left for us to 
say what shall be the faith and the hopes of that 
new age. It is left to ns to fix the type of char- 
acter, the order of thought, the standard of con- 
duct, the religious belief of those who shall then 
live. Is there any fear that we shall trans- 
mit to them too great a reverence, too much 
integrity, too large a gravity, or any unneeded 
religious principle ? No ! The fear is that we 
shaU transmit too little of these elements. The 
peril is lest the religious principle shall be so 
weak, so attenuated in us that it shall not be 
transmitted at all, and our descendants shall make 
shipwreck of body and soul, because they shall 
lack those conservative qualities and virtues which 
our parents gave as their best legacy to us, and 
which have been the means of our prosperity and 
happiness here, and the nourisher of a hope of 
endless happiness beyond the grave. 

I appeal unto you, then, to become religious. 
Confirm yourselves in the faith and practice of a 
lofty piety. I appeal to you who are parents to do 
this for the sake of your sons and your daughters, 
who will be just what you make them by your 
teachings and your example. I appeal to you in 
the name, not alone of the living, but in the name 
of the yet unborn, unto whom you will transmit 
your characters, and in so doing irresistibly shape 



18 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and fashion theirs. Eemember that the future 
teems with life. The past is no fuller of graves 
than the years ahead are with cradles. I sum- 
mon these into life to deepen the solemnity of my 
appeal; I print their faces in outline upon the 
air : behold how dense, how thick, how multitudi- 
nous they crowd upon your vision, — millions upon 
millions of immortal beings, whose lives you can 
make or mar. In the name of these I appeal to 
you, I exhort you. Be what you would have 
them be, act as you would have them act, live 
as you would have them live, that you may die 
in the same holy confidence and peace with which 
we all desire they at the close of their mortal 
lives may pass up to their Maker and their God. 

In vision I see two futures, both of which is 
possible, one of which will be real. In the one, if 
a certain school of thought has its way, and works 
itself fully out in its influence upon men's minds, 
it will be a fearful thing to live. For in it men 
wdll be developed to the fullest measure of refine- 
ment and possibility ' of power, sensitive along 
every fibre and tense in every cord ; with in- 
structed vision they shall look upon the material 
universe, able to direct the forces of matter as a 
master directs a slave, full of developed faculty, 
liigh aspiration, and unintermittent energy. So 
they stand, God-like in capacity and fair to look 
upon. But to them there shall be no shield to 



' MODERN SCEPTICISM ; HOW IT SHOULD BE MET. 19 

ward away the arrows of pain, no immunity 
against sickness, no consolation in sorrow, no 
escape from death, no perception of a heaven of 
refuge and rest which their spirits shall find 
beyond the grave, no celestial state, no angelic 
destiny. That is one of two possible futures as I 
see them. I thank God that I see another. In 
this other, not remote but near, I see men also 
filled with knowledge and power, but under the 
direction of a holiness such as the first Adam lost 
and the second Adam came to restore, — full of 
dignity, innocence, wisdom, and love. In this 
future I now see all men appear like brothers ; 
wrongs are no longer inflicted, misery no longer 
endured. In it are no armies, no battle-fields, 
no slaughter, no war. Love prevails, peace reigns, 
and the glory of the Lord, whose laws are the 
corrected consciences of men, is over it all. Here, 
then, you behold the two possible futures. • I put 
them before you, side by side. Which will you. 
help make real ? 

The age ahead of us will be one of construction. 
Mighty edifices will be planned and reared ; vast 
structures, intended for man's accommodation and 
safety, will go up in the face of the nations, such as 
the nations never saw. I seek, therefore, for a sure 
foundation, for the fit and adequate basis ; where 
is it to be found ? I reply. In God's Word, in 
religionreduced to practice, in justice and true 



20 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

holiness. I do not expect to live to see the com- 
pletion of it; but when the temple which will 
express the full and perfect result of man's labors 
is builded, and the capstone, one block of solid 
crystal, has been laid amid the shouting of all 
peoples, I pray that it may have the Eock of Ages 
for its basis, and its entire front one blaze of 
splendor, because it shall reflect, as a mirror does 
a face, the glory of the Lord. 



THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION, AND OUR DUTY. 21 

SEEMON II.* 

THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION, AND OUR DUTY. 

** Knowing that tribulation worketh patience." — Romans v. 3. 



MEN" are born under conditions of suffering. 
Suffering is not an exception, it is the 
very law of earthly existence. It enters as a com- 
ponent part into the experiences of life. The typ- 
ical man of the race, even He in whose heart and 
life all that man might feel or be was manifested, 
was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. 
He shared, in becoming human, the common nature 
and condition of humanity. From the highest to 
the lowest member of the race, as history proves, 
tribulation has been common to all. 

To-day, as citizens of Boston, as business men 
and Christians, we stand under the shadow of a 
great calamity, and every bosom feels the chill and 
dreariness of it. A catastrophe has fallen upon 
us, of such magnitude as to make it almost un- 
paralleled in the annals of the world. At such a 
time there is but one subject of which men think, 
one theme about which they talk. I devote the 
hour of this service to the great topic. Whatever 
wisdom, whatever consolation, whatever cheer, I 

* Preached the Sabbath evening following the great fire. 



22 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

am able to give to you through the exercise of 
the ministerial function and the dedication of this 
opportunity to the attempt, I aspire to give I 
know not anything I would forego or withhold 
if by yielding it forth the public heart might be 
cheered and the public courage strengthened. 

This is not the first time, by any means, good 
friends, that this city has been afflicted ; indeed, it 
was cradled in adversity and grew up amid dangers. 
Flames, pestilence, war, tyranny, — these were the 
elements of opposition which it was compelled to 
face and conquer from the start. Two hundred 
years ago this city was visited by a great conflagra- 
tion, which swept away nearly a hundred dwelling- 
houses, and gave such a blow to the then infant 
colony as caused many to predict its extinction. 
These experiences were repeated time and again 
before Boston went down into the terrible haz- 
ard of the Eevolution. Then again she seemed 
doomed. If the Eevolution had been a failure, 
you can imagine the fate that would have befallen 
Boston. She would have been razed to the ground 
and wiped out, and her foundations sown with salt, 
as the nest and cradle of political heresies too 
dangerous to oppression not to receive a signal 
repression. 

Amid all these years, at every crisis men have 
not been wanting who predicted our ruin. Two 
centuries ago Boston was called '' The Lost Town." 



THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION, AND OUR DUTY. 23 

But amid all her perils she has kept the same un- 
daunted heart, the same persevering spirit. More 
than once she has stood on the very brink of ruin ; 
but the ruin has in ^very case been avoided. 

In this brief resume of your history you can 
find the prediction touching your future, — the 
only prediction to which you should give any 
heed. The forces of evil that threaten us have 
been felt and gauged before your time in this city, 
and we know therefore the line of their limitation. 
I know that men say that the wealth of Boston is 
gone ; that her treasure is taken from her, and that 
she stands impoverished. This exclamation — I 
will not look upon it as a statement — is a mis- 
take. It is a mistake, I say, born from excitement 
and a superficial estimate of what constitutes the 
city's wealth. Ladies and gentlemen, this is no 
time for egotism, for vain words and idle boasting, 
nor do I use such when I declare before you 
that the w^ealth of Boston is not taken from her; 
for it never consisted of material riches. The 
wealth of this city, since her charter was granted, 
since the hour she was born, never existed in 
blocks of granite and stamped coin. The world 
has never gauged our value by the money in our 
coffers. When strangers have visited you, the 
noted men and women of our own and other na- 
tions, they never visited Winthrop Square and 
India AVharf and State Street, to discover how 



24 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

much we were worth. No. They said, " The Bos- 
ton that is above all American cities in value, 
whose existence has been beyond price to man- 
kind, is not to be found in bags that moths eat, 
and in places where thieves break through and 
steal." They turned their steps rather to Bunker 
Hill, sentinelled against forgetfulness by its shaft 
of commemorative granite ; to Faneuil Hall, where 
Liberty, using the eloquent lips of your ancestors 
for her mouthpiece, made her first proclamation to 
the continent, — they glance at the pages of your 
history, luminous with the great names of your past 
and greater deeds, — they direct their eyes to 
those indices that the present affords, and, seeing 
the evidences of taste, the manifestations of cul- 
ture, the integrity of merchants too honorable to 
resort to any tricky evasions to escape calamity, 
the patriotism, piety, and humanity which prevail 
here, said, " We have found a city at last whose 
material riches do not constitute her wealth, and 
whose value to commerce is not to be compared 
with her value to man." 

So, then, I say that Boston, although she stands 
with her feet deep in the ashes of eighty acres of 
warehouses such as no other American city could 
show ; although her streets are littered with the 
fragments of massive pillars and architectural de- 
signs which had cost her millions to erect, and 
which were her pride ; although trade is inter- 



THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION, AND OUR DUTY. 25 

rupted, accumulation checked, and the savings of 
years gone forever, still I maintain that Boston 
has not become poor. I know the value of money, 
but I know that it is unjust to this city for any to 
say that in losing it she loses her riches. Wall 
Street means New York. It was founded for com- 
merce and not for an idea, and there the forces of 
her ambition and her energies converge. The very 
blood in her veins is metallic. The pulse which 
tells- how that blood beats is her gold-room. A 
man who stands with his finger on that knows 
whether New York is sick or well. It is different 
with you. Neither State Street, nor Devonshire 
Street, nor Summer Street, nor all together, ever 
meant Boston. Wipe them all away, blot them 
from the map of your city, and the old heroic 
blood would never lose a beat. It would flow 
with an unruffled and an unweakened current in 
her veins. The light would not die out in her 
eyes, nor the color desert her cheek. Slie w^ould 
still stand as erect, as confident in herself, as illus- 
trious before the 'eyes of the nation and the world, 
as before. 

It is this which constitutes the privileges of 
citizenship here. You are permitted to be citizens 
of a city whose wealth is composed of the glory 
of her history and the sacredness of her traditions ; 
whose riches are her culture, her art, her science, 
her literature, the high-toned character of her mer- 

2 



26 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

chants, the eloquence of her orators, the intel- 
ligent patriotism of her children. And these are 
placed by the law of their nature beyond and 
above the reach of accident. Neither the flames 
of one nor of a hundred conflagrations can reach 
these. Boston walks the furnace with sandals 
that feel not the heat, and stands revealed in greater 
beauty amid the light of her blazing buildings. 

But, friends, even if this were not true, — if your 
wealth was only material ; if granite and iron, bales 
of merchandise and cunningly wrought fabrics, 
did represent your wealth, — still w^ould my prop- 
osition remain true, still you would not be poor. 
Men say we have " lost " so many millions. I admit 
it. The word is a good one. It fits the fact. 
These millions are '' lost," but they are not gone 
forever. You shall find them again. For the 
time being they haA^e gone from your sight. The 
pride of granite and the glory of bronze, the 
w^ealth of metal and the splendor of the loom, 
have been volatilized; they were snatched from 
the solid forms and marvellous devices into which 
they had been wrought by the skill of human 
hands, by the energy of human minds, and were 
borne upward into the air in flame and smoke. 
And yet they are only gone for a time. They are 
only lost, not destroyed. You will search for this 
departed wealth and find it. The clouds will sur- 
render it back to you, and you will anchor it again 



THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION, AND OUR DUTY. 27 

to your pavements. The elements shall again be 
condensed to substance, and your streets be lined 
with the forms of architectural beauty and gran- 
deur of which they have been so suddenly and 
ruthlessly robbed. 

If one needed any other support than that which 
is found in your own energy and enterprise to sus- 
tain the prediction, it might be found in the fact 
than an uncrippled, a prosperous, a growthful Bos- 
ton is a commercial necessity to New England and 
the country. Men do not decide where cities shall 
be built. Geography decides- it. The conformation 
of the continent decides it. You may take New 
York as an illustration. 

Her parentage was not of men. Her conception 
was of old time, when the Almighty traced the 
boundary of the sea. She was begotten with the 
primal pangs of nature, when this continent came 
forth from the womb of waters. New York is the 
child of God, born when he drew the outlines of 
our shores ; plighted to commerce when he placed 
her in the arms of two rivers, and breathed life 
into her by the cool breath of the ocean. Men, 
indeed, have clothed her in satin, and adorned her 
with gold ; but she was begotten out of the sea by 
the Spirit of the Lord. 

The same is true with Boston. Here it was in- 
dicated that a city must stand when God stretched 
the line of our coast. So long as Maine keeps her 



28 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

position on the map, while New Hampshire is 
anchored where she now is by her White Hills, 
while Vermont lies this side of Champlain, and 
Ehode Island touches us on the south, — while these 
States remain with their manifold industries and 
necessities, Boston must remain also, serving as a 
receptacle and outlet of their accumulations. Here 
must be the centre of New England commerce, the 
point of reception and supply of what New Eng- 
land produces and what her people need. There is 
not a village-store in all these States commercially 
associated with you that did not feel the shock 
when those warehouses fell. There is not one that 
will not suffer while this great gap and vacancy in 
the very centre of your city remain unfilled. It is 
not I that demand that these fallen structures be 
at once rebuilt. Every store, every church, every 
school-house, every college, every railroad, every 
vessel that sails in and out of New England har- 
bors, yea, every day-laborer in shop or on farm, 
unite their voices in one great, spontaneous utter- 
ance of encouragement and cheer. The argument 
with which they urge you to speedy effort is not 
based on regard for and sympathy with you alone ; 
it is based upon the hope, the certainty rather, of ben- 
efit to themselves as well. Nor is it New England 
that is interested alone. The grain-fields of the West, 
the lumber- woods of Wisconsin, the coal-mines of 
Pennsylvania, the cotton-lands of the South, every 



THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION, AND OUR DUTY. 29 

interest, and every class and order of production, 
send the same cry down to our shores. "Live, 
rebuild, and enlarge your boundaries," they say. 
" We are members of a body of which you are the 
heart ; receive from us and return to us, lest we die." 
It is only at some such time as this that we 
realize the intimacy of that association of interest 
with which, through civilization, God is binding 
all men together. The isolation and antagonisms 
of the past are no longer possible. Suffering is no 
longer individual ; it is communal, it is national. 
Gain and loss are mutual. Cities are connected 
like children of one family. If one sickens, all are 
anxious ; if one is attacked, all come to the rescue. 
The ikmes had scarcely lighted up Summer Street 
before the wires that speak began to talk, and, put- 
ting our ears down to the sounding-plate, we heard 
far-off Chicago inquire, " What can I do for you ? " 
New York, too, saw the dreadful light ; the city of a 
hundred nationalities, — no less cosmopolitan in her 
virtues than her vices, thank God ! — the island 
settled by the Dutch, saw that the city of the Puri- 
tans was on fire, and, hushing the babble of her 
streets, grouped herself around her bulletin-boards 
as men stand around the coffin of a friend. If 
anything was needed to give the lie to such as say 
that trade is selfish, that commerce is only merce- 
nary, that the American thinks of nothing but dol- 
lars and cents, it can be found in the sublime spec- 



30 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

tacle of spontaneous generosity which greeted Chi- 
cago one year ago, and which greets ns to-day. 
Our embarrassment is not that of one neglected 
and in want, but of one unto whom is offered more 
than he needs, more than he can take. The hands" 
that are eager to bestow are more numerous than 
the hands wiUing to receive. The sympathy is 
greater than the pain. 

With all these necessities and material interests 
exhorting us, with the generous sympathy of the 
nation and of the whole civilized world spontane- 
ously offered, with every aid that interest and friend- 
ship combined can proffer, what can prevent the 
resurrection of what has been buried, or the ascen- 
sion of what is for the moment debased ? I submit 
that the only way in which we can manifest either 
our wisdom or our appreciation is to proceed at 
once, without a moment's delay, and with all the 
energy and courage transmitted to us through ten 
generations of dauntless ancestry, to rebuild the 
structures and re-establish the industries which 
the conflagration has destroyed and interrupted. 

But, friends, if the generosity of other cities is 
worthy of mention in this hour and place, much 
more worthy of mention is the heroism that you 
yourselves, in this dreadful crisis of your fortunes, 
have displayed. I know the record of your past. 
The heroism of your ancestors is known to me. 
As a boy, ere ever I had visited the locality of 



THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION, AND OUR DUTY. 31 

their exploits, I had read with kindling enthusiasm 
the story of their deeds. I knew their history by 
heart ; and, since coming among you, standing on 
the very spot where their fame was gained, that 
fame has confirmed in my soul for them and theirs 
an admiration my boyhood never knew. But amid 
all the glowing pages of that history, bright as 
they are with the record of deeds whose line has 
gone out to all the earth, and their melody to the 
end of the world, I know not that page more lu- 
minous than the one you have just added, or rather 
are even now adding, to the radiant scroll of this 
city's fame. It has been said that men do not 
know when they are heroic ; that the crisis which 
calls forth heroism causes it to become the law and 
habit of the soul, so that what is in itself extraor- 
dinary passes unnoticed. Be that as it may, whether 
those who are to-day tlie living embodiment of the 
heroic mood and temper in this city are aware of 
what they express or not, the fact remains the 
same. The heroes are here ; if unconscious of their 
heroism, then are they all the more heroes. Men 
that can stand, as many of you have stood, and see 
the accumulations of a lifetime swept away with- 
out a murmur ; young men who can see the all that 
they were worth — valuable not so much because of 
its present amount as for what with good manage- 
ment and application they might yet make it — 
destroyed before their eyes, and yet begin again 



32 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

with unweakened hope and cheerfulness of tem- 
per ; men who can be flung from opulence to beg- 
gary, and give no sign that they feel the shock ; 
men who ask of Misfortune that she spare them 
enough to pay their debts dollar for dollar and 
dime for dime, and, finding that their prayer is 
granted, go down to their homes happy with the 
happiness of an honest man ; — such men, I afl&rm, 
are heroes, whether they know it or not. They were 
born of heroic blood, and of the same blood they 
are and will their children be. A city with such 
citizens cannot be destroyed. Fires may consume 
her, but out of her ashes a new and more brilliant 
expression of her energies will rise. With the 
occurrence of every new calamity her fame shall 
increase. The voice of misfortune shall sing her 
praise, and if she die at last, as all things earthly 
may, the lips of death itself would warm into life 
for once, that they might proclaim her eulogy. 

But amid our regrets and pain for what is gone, 
let us gratefully remember what remains. We lose 
much, but we keep more. Your stores are gone, 
but your homes are untouched. The wives and 
mothers, the children of the city, all live. No fire 
has charred your threshold, no flames invaded your 
chambers. Your children sleep undisturbed at 
night, and the mother bends over them unharmed. 
We mourn, but not as those whose parents have 
been slain, or whose children are snatched away. 



THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION, AND OUR DUTY. 33 

Those ruins are dire enough ; but black as they 
are, they are not such as mark the former sites of 
homes destroyed. We are spared yet the specta- 
cle of families broken up, of population scattered, 
of society disorganized. We suffer, but our suffer- 
ing is not the pangs of unappeased hunger, of bod- 
ies exposed to cold, of sickness imtended, of death 
uncheered. Our kindred and neighbors are still 
with us, our homes and our altars still stand, the 
friendships of men are not forfeited, nor our faith 
in God destroyed. The night is indeed dark, but 
we know that a dawn shall come ; and even now, 
as we gaze into the sombre vault of our misfortune, 
we stand amazed at the number and magnitude of 
the stars. 

I have said that our population is not scattered, 
nor will it be. Boston is not our workshop. Bos- 
ton is our home. The motives that hold us here 
are not mercenary. Men go to New York and 
Chicago as a bee goes to a flower, to load itself 
with extracted wealth ; then leave : men come to 
Boston to stay. A Bostonian does not feel at home 
in any other city. He leaves her with regret, in 
response to some necessity, and returns with glad- 
ness. The cause of this is to be found in the fact 
that we are a homogeneous people. This is, perhaps, 
the only American city in America. A certain per 
cent of foreign element is here, but it is compara- 
tively so small, it is so distributed among and over- 
2* c 



34 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

shadowed by the native element, that it makes no 
positive impression on our character or history. In 
sharp contrast with this is the position of things 
in New York. Within her borders the nations of 
the earth tent. Every civilized nation has sent its 
colony. Go into one section of that great metrop- 
olis, and you are in Venice ; the faces of the peo- 
ple, the language, the amusements, are all Italian. 
Go to another street, and you stand in Berlin ; to 
another, and you have visited a French town ; to 
the fourth, and you know that you are in Dublin. 
It is not so with us. Wherever a stranger goes 
here, he finds the New-Englander. Our language, 
our modes of thought, our type of character, even 
the cast of our countenances, are purely American. 
This it is, friends, that makes us homogeneous, and 
anchors us to this place. No disaster, no calamity, 
can drive us hence. People talk about our young 
business-men leaving us. They talk in their igno- 
rance ; they do not estimate aright the forces of 
those great laws and motives which bind the chil- 
dren of New England to her soil. I heard a man 
from Chicago talking in the cars the other day, 
and estimating how many of us would leave the 
city and come to Chicago. I could have told him 
not one. When we go we shall all go together. 
If Chicago ever sees us coming, she will see us 
coming two hundred and fifty thousand strong. We 
shall move down on her like an army with ban- 



THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION, AND OUR DUTY. 35 

ners, take possession of her schools, her churches, 
her printing-presses, and make her over into an- 
other and a larger Boston. We shall stand by each 
other here. We shall stand by the city of our birth 
and our love. We shall live here because we pre- 
fer this spot to any other locality on the continent. 
And when we die, our eyes will be lifted in hope 
to the same sky on which our fathers gazed when 
they were summoned, and our graves will be made 
side by side with theirs. 

I rejoice at the attitude you hold to-day before 
the cities of the world. The orderly bearing of 
our soldiery, the energy of our police, the brave 
spirit which has animated our fire department 
from the chief to the subordinate, the dignity and 
discretion which have signalized the conduct of 
the City Government, the courageous hopefulness of 
the sufferers, — these challenge the admiration and 
should receive the gratitude of every heart. Mis- 
takes may have been committed, errors of judgment 
may have occurred ; but these are so inconsider- 
able in number and degree that they find an ample 
explanation in the terrible emergency in which 
government and people were so suddenly placed. 

At a time like this no one has a right to be self- 
ish. We must all live on the level of the Golden 
Eule. The man who plans now only how to make 
the most money, who has the heart to build up 
his own fortune on the necessities of others, who 



36 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

uses this calamity for his own private advantage, — 
such a man is an extortioner and a thief. This is 
a crisis. Interests far superior to any private in- 
terests are at stake. The ordinary maxims of trade 
are insufficient. They are not generous and noble 
enough to meet the emergency. An extraordinary 
claim must receive an extraordinary response. In- 
tense suffering has a right to expect unusual con- 
solation. The question is not how much money 
you who have entirely escaped or been touched 
lightly by the fire can make at this juncture, the 
question is one of sympathy, of helpfulness, of hon- 
orable and benevolent conduct on your part towards 
the afflicted and the depressed. The cheering word, 
the helpful loan, the willingness to accommodate, 
the waiving of a legal right that the spirit of all 
law may be honored, — these are the methods by 
which our duty can to-day be discharged. Any 
other course on the part of any man, no mat- 
ter what his station or his name, will advertise 
him as a dishonorable citizen. If such conduct 
should be practised by many, the shame of Boston 
would be greater than her loss. 

I rejoice that an opposite spirit distinguishes the 
action of our citizens. If we have learned no other 
lesson by our experience, we have at least been 
convinced that friendship is not dead nor gener- 
osity extinct. With the fire, the spirit of selfish 
competition disappeared. The rival became a 



THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION AND OUR DUTY. 37 

friend. Men whom we had considered miserly 
we found to be generous. The calamity which has 
fallen on us has made us brothers. Henceforth 
we shall love men better by reason of the love 
which has been shown us. "VVe shall all of us 
hereafter be more neighborly than we have been. 

We know also, better than we did, the true value 
of wealth. The worth and the worthlessness of 
riches are perceived. We know what they can buy 
and what they cannot buy, and this is the first and 
prime essential for correct judgment concerning 
them. They can buy food for the body ; they can 
buy raiment ; they can purchase ease, and help us 
toward knowledge ; culture can be bribed, indul- 
gence of the senses secured ; — all these money 
can command, for these are in the markets of the 
world and can be bought. In this direction it 
has worth. But there are things more essential 
than these that it cannot buy. It cannot buy ex- 
emption from pain nor surcease of sorrow : the 
hearts of the rich ache with the poor, and their 
eyes are as often filled with tears. It cannot pur- 
chase protection from sickness nor escape from 
death : the rich and the poor are brothers in their 
equality of suffering and exposure to the com- 
mon catastrophe, if death might thus be named. 
It cannot buy you, young men, an easy conscience, 
or that peace which cometh to men's hearts when 
they feel that their sins are forgiven. It cannot 



38 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

give you love for man nor faith in God. This les- 
son, I say, we have learned. In the light of our 
blazing wealth we saw how little it can purchase 
of those things which the heart must have if it 
would not break, which the soul must obtain if it 
would not die. 

Such, in brief, is the lesson of the fire. Other 
and it may be sublimer truths will come to us as 
we reflect and ponder upon the occurrences of the 
past week. The face of the Future to-day is veiled, 
but her countenance is intelligent and her mouth 
full of wisdom. When the veil is fully lifted, and 
the lips which are silent now have told us all they 
know, in the light of that instruction and revela- 
tion I make no doubt we shall understand the 
divine significance of this affliction, and glorify 
with our grateful praise the Almighty Being who 
understands the uses of sorrow and those traits in 
us which make its discipline salutary. Until that 
time I am willing to wait. Until then I turn to 
the strength and consolation of patience. And as 
the Christians of all time and every nation have 
done, whether they stood bound to stakes or lay 
languishing in dungeons, whether they bore the 
ordinary troubles of life or were ingulfed amid 
signal calamities, we turn our faces upward, and 
with the steady calmness of trust and hope ex- 
claim, "Thy will be done." 



PBEACHING THE GOSPEL. 39 

SEEMON III. 

PREACHING THE GOSPEL. 

*'And that repentance and remission of sins should be 
preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jeru- 
salem." — Luke xxiv. 47. 

THERE are two ways I shall mention in w^hicli 
the gospel can be preached nominally, but not 
virtually. And in the first place it is thus preached 
when it is presented only as a system of morals, as 
the best presentation of ethical philosophy. 

Of course J do not deny that the gospel al- 
lows of philosophical treatment, or that its truths 
may be assorted and woven into a fabric whose 
rich finish and mutually assisting colors shall 
cause it to stand unrivalled beside all other 
combinations of men's thought. I know how 
beautifully it bears the test of analysis ; how its 
sequences are the admiration of logic, and with 
what exactness its parts may be fitted into a 
v/hole. I yield to none in my admiration of what 
is called systematic theology. I remember that 
Knox and Calvin and Jonathan Edwards w^ere 
preachers of the Cross. Nor do I forget that I am 
speaking to-day in that portion of the globe where 
the gospel has captured both the hearts and the 
heads of the people, and where for two hundred 



40 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

years half the intellectual energy of the country 
has spent its force in earnest, often heated, theologi- 
cal discussion. Whenever I grasp the sword of 
the Spirit, I feel that the strength of the hilt 
within my palm is made up of twisted wire. But 
while I admit all this, I assert, at the same time, 
that the force thus represented does not represent 
the force of the gospel. No system of morals, no 
philosophy, no number of ethical propositions, can 
represent the glad news. He who reasons on no 
higher level than these reasons with an uninspired 
and unillumined intellect. That upper realm of 
electric, of divine force, upon entering which the 
human mind is filled with celestial, puissant fervor, 
he has never touched. Beyond that line of finished 
culture, of narrow though exact conception, of ver- 
bal polish and melodious intonation, as an orator, 
he can never go. Upon the very edge of the ex- 
traordinary his tethered feet halt. The power to 
soothe men's sorrows, to inspire the despondent 
with a lasting buoyancy, to breathe enduring hope 
into the bosom of despair, to start the guilty con- 
science into healthy terror, to melt the stony heart 
by tenderest appeals, to rive from apex unto base 
the ponderous shaft of some nicely chiselled and 
strongly cemented national vice, — this the preachei 
of a mere philosophy can never do. Heaven lends 
not its power to one who has no faith in heaven. 
He who does not believe in the bolts of Jove can- 
not be a Jove. 



PREACHING THE GOSPEL. 41 

My fear is, friends, that this distinction is, to 
some extent at least, being lost sight of in New 
England. I fear that the philosophy of Christian- 
ity is crowding out Christianity ; that the the- 
ology of the seminaries is usurping the throne 
formerly held by the glad news of the Master. 
The gospel field is esteemed by some as too nar- 
row for the fullest exercise and development, not 
to say the advertisement, of natural gifts and 
acquired culture, and hence he who aspires to 
great usefulness and a wide fame must go beyond 
that line which circumscribes tlie preaching of the 
gospel. How erroneous this is, and how fatal is 
the mistake upon those who make it, will appear 
to any of you who will calmly consider for a single 
moment the character of the gospel. The gospel 
is not a single shaft of truth chiselled and duly set 
by divine power. It is no shaft at all. It is a 
tree planted by the rivers of water, whose flowing 
is out of God's own loving heart, and its leaves are 
for the healing of the nations. Christ himself 
likened the kingdom of heaven to a dozen differ- 
ent things, and he might have gone on likening it 
to numberless other things, and then not have illus- 
trated it. The fact is, it is too manifold in its 
adaptations to be illustrated. It is not just to the 
Avhole to compare it with a part, and the gospel is 
a whole as set over against every need, hope, fear, 
and experience of the human hearty and hence it is 
above comparison. 



42 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

For one, I feel that the presentation of the 
blessed gospel to my fellow-men is sufficient to 
tax the utmost power, both natural and acquired, 
of the most gifted and cultured of men. It is re- 
lated to everything that touches human progress. 
It has a supply for every need, a solace for every 
sorrow^, a balm for every wound. I regard it as 
alone able to supply the inspiration which prompts 
one to live a noble life ; as alone able to apply the 
needed checks to man's otherwise recMess con- 
duct ; as alone able to introduce and confirm good 
government among the nations of the earth, be- 
cause it alone is able to restore unto man the 
divine ability to govern himself. I address myself 
to the preaching of the gospel, therefore, feeling 
that it represents principles, energies, and powers 
so adapted, so abounding, so potential for human 
good, that no capacity can fully appreciate, no 
scholarship apprehend, no eloquence adequately 
express them. The gospel plan of salvation is not 
to me one among many stars appointed of God to 
give light unto men; it is the one great luminary, 
in the moral heavens, vast of orb and perfectly 
sphered, deriving its beams from the Source of all 
light, alone able to dispel human darkness, and 
forever rising with healing in its beams. Wher- 
ever I see any wrong, any sorrow, any ignorance, 
any vice, any sin, there I long to preach it. I 
picture it as standing like an angel beside the 



PREACHING THE GOSPEL. 43 

cradle, its face radiant with joyful sympathy, 
and holding steadily above it a shield ample 
enous^h to cover mother and child both. At the 
grave I behold it, its countenance no less radiant, 
its posture no less sanguine, its shield reversed, 
and the departing soul cradled and borne away on 
what, during all its earthly life, had been its sure 
defence. 

How vain is it, then, for the human intellect to 
turn from this to lesser themes for inspiration ! 
What permission so gracious, what career so noble, 
what mission so high, as to proclaim unto men the 
simple message of grace ! Give me a vocabulary 
sufficient, give me the art of persuasion that shall 
be adequate, give me that address that shall win 
men to the hearing and believing the glad news, and 
I ask no more of culture or of grace ; for along 
with such power to preach the gospel will come 
whatever is needed in philosophy or desirable in 
culture. 

Again, I remark that preaching the law is not 
preaching the gospel. 

It was most unfortunate, as I think, that the 
New England pulpit in its origin and earlier efforts 
drew so much of its inspiration from the Old Tes- 
tament. I need not recount the history of the 
causes which led to this. The fact is patent to 
every one at all familiar with the religious history 
of New England, that the early divines had a one- 



44 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

sided and inadequate conception of Christianity. 
To them the New Testament was only a fractional 
addition to the Old. Their judgment of men, 
their conceptions of God, their interpretations of 
providences, their manner of speech, even their 
deportment, were shaped and colored in accord- 
ance with such revelations of God as were given 
to men prior to the incarnation of Christ. They 
write and speak as men who felt that they were 
still under the law, and not under grace. Their 
theology was harsh. Their presentation of God 
was untrue, because imperfect. They saw Him too 
much as a judge, and too little as a father. The 
shadow of Sinai rested darkly on Calvary, and 
obscured its effulgence. Their misconception bore 
its natural fruit. Eevivals were intermittent, and 
widely separate in time. Persecution was sanc- 
tioned, nay, inaugurated. Custom and precedent 
became sacred, and the power of the entire eccle- 
siastical machinery was set in stubborn opposi- 
tion against needed change. Legislation was relied 
upon to control the morals of a community. Lib- 
erty of opinion was denied, and free discussion 
practically forbidden. Against this state of things, 
constituting a practical tyranny of the worst kind, 
men naturally and inevitably revolted. I doubt 
that there is a single error in religious interpreta- 
tion thriving among us to-day whose root does not 
reach back to that old state of things. The fathers 



PREACHING THE GOSPEL. 45 

forgot Calvary, and their children forget Sinai. 
The one party preached judgment divorced from 
mercy; the other party are preaching mercy di- 
vorced from judgment. The pendulum, as I think, 
will steady its oscillations in the next generation, 
and limit its movement within the proper extremes. 
Now, whether you agree with me in these re- 
marks touching the position of the New England 
pulpit in the beginning or not, you will, I trust, 
agree with me in this, that to preach the legisla- 
tion of the Old Testament is not to preach the 
salvation proclaimed in the New. Moses and the 
Law can make no such impression on the human 
mind as the Saviour and the Cross. Fear is not 
the equal of love as a redemptive force. The 
pulpit that draws the inspiration of its teachings 
from the Old Testament is weak beside one which 
breathes forth the spirit of the New. The lan- 
guage of Isaiah is lofty, and the w^ords of David are 
sweet ; but from the mouth of neither did there 
ever come such utterances as came forth from the 
heart of Him who " spake as never man spake." 
Now, the command of Christ is upon us all to 
preach the gospel. God as revealed in Christ, and 
not as shadowed forth in ancient symbol, as pre- 
dicted in prophecy, or as hymned in psalmody, is 
the God whose nature we are to explain, whose 
ways we are to vindicate, whose love we are to 
declare. I am not a Jew. I am not a priest of a 



46 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

temple worship. I am not a servant of the na- 
tional deity of any one race or nation or tribe. I 
am simply one of millions, all of whom are our 
brethren. I am an ambassador of One greater 
than the Temple. I am a child of Him w^ho is 
the tender and loving Father to every human be- 
ing. This distinction the Christian preacher should 
feel. It should be evident in every sermon; it 
should be breathed forth in every prayer. He 
should stand before people as one appointed to 
brino* an invitation and not a threat. He should 
never forget that Christ declared in so many words 
that He did not come to judge the world, but that 
the world, through Him, might be saved. But 
why do I say that a preacher should do so and so ? 
What forbids me to do it myself now and here ? 
My hearer, I am a preacher myself of the gospel, 
an ambassador of this same God, and I have a 
message for each of you. To you who were once 
warm in heart and bright of hope, but who are now 
cold, indifferent, despondent, I come with the mes- 
sage to cheer up. You have not lost the ability 
to obey, to do, to fulfil. You are not deserted of 
God. You have not fatally offended Him. You 
are not counted out of the number of the elect, 
and given over as lost. The source of your 
strength and hope was never in yourself ; I say — 
and I charge you to remember it — the source of 
your strength and hope was in God's love for you, 



PEEACHIN^G THE GOSPEL. 47 

and that love remains unchanged. Now, all of 
you who have fallen off in holy effort; all you 
who have given up prayer, frightened from your 
old communion with God because of your sins; 
all you who have lost courage and have said, " It 
is of no use for me to try any more, I am not a 
Christian, and never was one " ; all you who were 
once open and professed disciples, but who are 
now hiding your faith in sinful privacy, — -I charge 
you all to remember that God has not given you 
up, that He has no idea of giving you up. You 
are His by adoption. You have acted strangely, 
perversely, perhaps, but He clings to you, and He 
will cling to you ; for in his heart, yea, in the ful- 
ness of infinite love, He has settled upon the de- 
termination to save you, and He will save 'you. 
What do I ask ? I ask you to co-operate with God. 
I ask you to allow Him to wash your sins away. 
Present yourselves before Him, and He will do it 
to the last stain. I ask you to admit the old, 
sweet, reassuring hope that now stands knocking 
at the door. Cast your fears to the winds. Of 
what are you fearful ? Your sins ? But Christ 
has made atonement for sins. But I have sinned 
repeatedly, persistently, and against light, you say. 
Very well ; I know all that. We have all sinned 
in precisely that way. Every redeemed soul in 
heaven sinned when it lived on the earth in that 
way. But this does not alarm me as a preacher. 



48 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

for I preach a Saviour who is able to save unto the 
uttermost. What is it that is recorded ? " Though 
your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow ; 
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as 
wool." It is not threat, it is not penalty, it is 
not condemnation I proclaim, but glad news, good 
cheer, encouragement to try again, and a sure pre- 
diction that you will succeed, because He who is 
for you is greater than he who is against you. 

that I might give you discouraged ones 
something of my courage, derived as it is from 
such a conception of the Divine nature, that it 
causes nothing in the way of redemption to seem 
impossible to Him ! that I might make you 
understand the significance of Calvary, — cause 
you, while sitting here to-day, to see it unfold in 
mighty vision before your eyes, until you saw 
what energies, what forces, what operant mercies, 
what yearnings for human souls, what divine de- 
terminations to save, it represents ! How Satan 
is exalted and Christ diminished by your fears ! 
Bring here the record of your lives, — your indis- 
cretions, your lapses, your broken pledges, your 
cowardly desertions, your sins and crimes and 
vices, — bring them all here, I say, and pile them up 
before this people, and, standing by this collected 
testimony of your guilt, enough to condemn a 
thousand souls, smitten with the sense of your 
short-comings, smite upon your breast and say. 



PREACHING THE GOSPEL. 49 

" God be merciful to me a sinner !" and I declare 
to yon, in the name of God, that you shall go 
down to your house forgiven. One drop of , that 
precious blood shed on Calvary shall cover, shall 
blot it all out forever and forever. 

Tell me that the Old Testament can supply a 
Christian pulpit any such theme to preach as this ! 
Tell me that out of any legislation, out of any 
philosophy,- out of any mere creed, out of any 
theology as a science, the human heart can draw 
any such inspiration as comes to it when telling 
men the story of the Cross ! Away with dogma, 
away with labored definition of disputed points, 
away with the defence and promulgation of sec- 
tarian views ! These do not make the gospel, 
these have no place in a gospel pulpit. Tell men 
rather of pardon offered, of sins forgiven, of help 
extended, of consolation bestowed, of life made 
holy, and death made triumphant, and their minds 
will apprehend and their hearts adore the loving 
mercy of God. 

There is one remaining point to which I ask 
your attention. It is the significance of, and the 
duty involved, in the command, " Preach." 

To preach the gospel is to make public proc- 
lamation of it. Preaching is not private con- 
versation ; it is public discussion, argument, 
appeal. To excel in social grace, in suavity, in 
courtesy of manner, is not to fulfil this injunction. 

3 D 



50 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

These excellences of nature and training do not 
represent the powers of a preacher. They are 
serviceable in Christian work, but not serviceable 
in the way pointed out in the text. I ask you to 
reflect upon the nature of that influence exercised 
by the public speaker. Consider the knowledge he 
imparts, the changes and growth in men's views of 
which he is the cause, the conviction he produces, 
the activities he starts, the measureless influence 
of his appeals. Consult history, and observe the 
prominent position the orator has always occupied. 
Whether his audience was a circle of savage 
warriors, a congregation of the populace, a raging 
mob, or an assembly of enlightened statesmen, 
whatever the audience or the occasion, his w^ords 
have led to momentous consequences. War and 
peace have often hung upon the movement of his 
lips. Thrones that no cannon could shake he has 
overturned with a motion of his hand. Despotism 
has trembled before the rebuke of his lips, and lib- 
erty more than once found needed refuge under 
the shield of his speech. Considering that this 
power is perpetual, born anew with the birth of 
each successive generation, you realize the wisdom 
of the great Founder of our religion when He se- 
lected it as the prime agent by which it was to. be 
advanced. My own feeling is that the modern 
Church does not begin to appreciate the power of 
this instrumentality. Living as we do in a free 



PREACHING THE GOSPEL. 51 

country, where education, and hence discussion, 
are universal, among a people eager to hear and 
quick to receive impressions from those who have 
qualified themselves for public expression, I claim 
that nothing is so important as that the Christian 
pulpit should stand exceedingly high in popular 
estimation. ' The true orator will never lack an 
audience. In himself is the all-suf&cient adver- 
tisement, the all-sufficient attraction, to gather 
hearers. No infelicity of circumstance, no oppo- 
sition of adverse condition, can prevent. His fame 
precedes him ; an audience always awaits his 
coming. These are facts that no one denies, but 
they are at the same time facts that the churches, 
even of New England, have never given due 
weight to in their administration. Again must 
we complain of the influence of tradition and the 
maxims of the past. When the country was 
thinly settled, and audiences small, the preacher 
as such had little opportunity. The pastoral rela- 
tion and influence were comparatively of far greater 
importance. Personal contact and acquaintance 
were then possible and potential for good. Nor 
can any one overestimate the direct and blessed 
usefulness of the old-time New England pastor as 
he went from house to house and from person to 
person ahiong his people. But all this is changed. 
"We live to-day amid a very different state of 
things. The old possibilities are no longer with 



52 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

the ministry ; and what might be called his '' per- 
sonal influence " can now be exerted by a minister 
over only a very small fraction of his people. 
These facts are patent to all. We may regret it ; 
we may shut our eyes and refuse to see what is 
painful to our sensibilities ; but the old pastoral re- 
lation, as it once existed between the ministry and 
the churches, is passed away. It does not exist. 
And there is not a clergyman or intelligent layman 
in New England but that knows that it can never 
again exist. We have entered upon a new order 
of things, and our wisdom will be shown, not by 
resisting, but by wisely shaping the new order. 
We shall cultivate the same fields as did our 
fathers, but we shall cultivate them in a different 
way. 

It is for the reasons enumerated, and similar ones, 
that I am led to reject as imwise all attempts to 
establish the ministry on what might be called the 
social basis. Eushing from house to house in pas- 
toral visitation, multiplication of tea-parties at the 
homes of his principal parishioners, attendance at 
every meeting of the sewing-society and the dea- 
cons' board, — this is all well enough as a recreation 
and a mild form of dissipation : but they do not fit 
a preacher for his pulpit ; they do not qualify him 
to expound and apply the Word of God in such a 
way as to enlighten men's minds and stir their 
hearts. For one, after a candid consideration of all 



PEE ACHING THE GOSPEL. 53 

the facts in the case, my mind has reached the 
painful conclusion that the New England pulpit 
represents to-day a lower average of that class of 
intellectual power needed to make it popularly 
strong and influential than at any previous time in 
its history. Certain facts are patent. Never was 
public speaking so highly esteemed by the masses 
as now. Even music must yield the laurel to 
oratory. Even the Greeks were not more willing 
hearers than are we. Nor is this eagerness to hear 
confined to our cities. I suppose that for two 
years my observation of New England has been as 
close upon this point as that of any public man. 
And I can truly say that, whether my appoint- 
ments took me amid the snows of Northern Ver- 
mont or the mud of Eastern Maine ; whether I 
entered a little hamlet in the dead of winter under 
the very feet of the White Mountains, or visited 
the towns that skirt the Long Island coast, — wher- 
ever I went, I have been surprised how quickly 
and under what little inducement an audience can 
be assembled in New England. And yet over 
against this must be set the fact, that although our 
church buildings in the average are of small size, 
they are not ordinarily half filled ! You can put 
two and two together, friends, and tell me the re- 
sult. My own opinion is, — and I declare it frank- 
ly everywhere, — my own opinion is, that the neg- 
lect of the sanctuary on the part of the people is 



54 MUSIC-HALL SEKMONS. 

largely due to the neglect of the study on the part 
of the preachers. Half the clergymen of New 
England honestly suppose that it is their duty to 
peddle the gospel week-days from house to house, 
rather than to preach it in the sanctuary on the 
Sabbath. The result is, that the time spent in 
doing the one leaves them unprepared to do the 
other. To this must be added another fact, that 
wherever you find one who has qualified himself 
to preach the gospel, you ascertain that the trouble 
is to find an audience-room large enough to ac- 
commodate the audience. Supply the inducement, 
and the audience appears. No matter what is the 
character of their theology, the result is the same. 
In verification of this statement run over a brief 
list of names. Theodore Parker and Starr King, 
Lyman Beecher and Kirk ; Cuyler, Beecher, Storrs, 
and Talmadge, of Brooklyn ; Hall and Chapin, of 
New York ; and Kittredge, of Chicago, — a man 
whom you should have kept and nourished in the 
soil where God planted him, — these are only a few 
of those men of God who are preaching the gos- 
pel to thousands every Sunday. What does not 
the Church and the nation owe to these men, and 
their like ? What enlargement of knowledge, what 
liberalizing of sentiment, what noble ambitions 
and iinpulses, what progress in virtue, what needed 
reforms in Church administration, have not sprung 
from their teachings ! I know not how without 



PEEACHING THE GOSPEL. 55 

them the cause of Christ, in the great centres of 
our population, could have been saved. 

The problem, friends, — and it is one to solve 
which the Church should instantly address herself, 
— the problem is. How can we best multiply this 
class of men ? If you wish to purify your politics, 
to keep the business instinct of the nation from 
becoming thoroughly sordid and atheistical, to iill 
your almost deserted churches, to reach with the 
message of salvation the dying masses, — then mul- 
tiply by a thousand-fold these noble voices that 
can proclaim the wisdom, the righteousness, and 
the love of God acceptably to men. that I 
might live to hear these voices sounding over the 
hills and through the valleys of my native land ! 
O that I might live to feel, when I saw, even if 
with my dying eyes, the flush of the Sabbath 
morning tinting the eastern sky, that the light of 
the rising orb would shine that day upon fifty 
millions of my countrymen — their w^ork sus- 
pended, their labors dropped, their worldly cares 
forgotten — walking, husband and wife, parent and 
child, friend and stranger, in happy but solemn 
procession to the house of God ! Then should I 
pass with an untroubled breast, and eyes swimming 
with happy tears at the celestial vision. 

I would that my voice miglit reach every lec- 
ture-room in the land, where with great skill and 
consecration of purpose young men are being 
taught how to preach bravely and without morti- 



56 * MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

fication to empty pews. Then would I charge 
them to think lightly of everything not directly 
calculated to fit them to preach attractively and 
powerfully the glad news of salvation to tempted, 
falling men. All scholarship that cannot be 
utilized in this direction is vain ; all erudition to 
no purpose. A tongue and heart knowledge of 
the gospel message ; a wdde knowledge of men ; 
familiar acquaintance with the details of the com- 
mon people's life, — an understanding of how men 
toil and rest, make money and lose it, are tempted 
and fall, live and die, — these are the elements 
of success as a preacher of the gospel. Men with 
such knowledge and attainments are the men we 
need by hundreds and thousands to-day. 

The charge of the Great Head of the Churcli to 
his disciples is, to go into all nations and make 
proclamation of the gospel. The charge remains 
unfulfilled. We need not go abroad to find those 
who do not hear the message. In our ow^n city 
the churches are counted by scores, but the un- 
taught can be counted by thousands. AVho are 
building churches for these ? Who are providing 
preachers ? What man of ability is surrendered 
even once a month by his owm flock to carry the 
glad new^s to these ? The churches are liberal in 
the giving of money, but what congregation has 
as yet surrendered even a fraction of its intellect- 
ual entertainment and spiritual privilege on the 
Sabbath, for the temporal improvement and eter- 



PREACHING THE GOSPEL. 57 

nal good of the ignorant and godless masses ? Not 
one. The line between deprivation and supply, 
between starvation and surfeiting, between the 
few and the many, is as clearly and unmistakably 
snapped as ever. What you have done serves to 
bring out only the more plainly what remains to 
be done. The mission school suggests the pulpit. 
The bread on the table advertises painfully the 
absence of meat. I demand a preacher and pul- 
pit for all these neglected ones. I demand that 
the few shall share as brothers their privileges 
with all ; that the churches of Boston, speaking 
in the votes of their parish and membership meet- 
ings, shall say to the Lord, '' We have given our 
money, we now give our pastor, for the conversion 
of our city ; take and use him, that he may be 
unto others what he has been unto us." This is 
the demand that I make modestly, reverently, and 
earnestly. I make it in the name of every public 
interest worthy of conservation ; in the name of 
order and health and decency; in the name of 
that blessed liberty which will be imperilled by 
any further increase of our present ignorance, vice, 
and impiety ; in the name of all these wretched 
beings living without God and .withoat hope in 
the world ; and, lastly, in the name of Him through 
the preaching of whose gospel I look for the re- 
generation of the whole world. 

3* 



58 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



SEEMON IV. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF A GREAT LOYE. 

" My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my 
ways." — Peo VERBS xxiii. 26. 

LAST Sabbath I spoke to you touching God's 
love for you, as shown by the measure of His 
giving. I wish to-day to speak to you touching 
our love for Him. Last Sabbath I called your at- 
tention to the Father's love for the child. I wish 
now to call your attention to the child's love for 
the Father. The Father's love is a great love. 
Every conceivable mark of greatness is in it. It 
is great in its warmth ; great in its service and 
desires; great in its sacrifices, its imj)ulses, its 
cravings, and its endurance. 

Such love should receive a corresponding return. 
The child's love should be like the Father's love, 
— great I emphasize the -wovdi great No small 
love will meet the obligations of the case. We 
must love God greatly if we are to meet the re- 
quirement of the text, " Son, give me thine heart." 

Now, a great love is characterized by certain 
essential elements. There are certain signs and 
marks invariably associated with it. It advertises 
its presence in the heart by such services, such 



CHAKACTERISTICS OF A GREAT LOVE. 59 

desires, and such sacrifices, that even the most 
casual observation takes note of it. Allow me to 
remind you of several of these characteristic qual- 
ities of a great love. 

The first I mention is this : it likes to be with 
the object of its affection. 

To love is to be attached to the object of your 
affection. Love is never at rest, never content, 
save with its own. The lower orders of life reveal 
to us the presence of the same impulse. When 
two birds mate they live together. Storm cannot 
keep the robin from its home. The far-flying 
eagle cannot pass a night away from the gray crag 
on which he has built his house. Eover that he 
is, he feels the drawing through the distance of a 
hundred leagues. The winds may be high, the 
tempest abroad in the heavens, yet he will not 
smooth his plumage until he sits upon the gray 
rock where his expectant mate sits brooding her 
tawny young. The horse is uneasy unless it can 
hear the loved voice and feel the loved hand. 
The charger will range the battle-field, undismayed 
by the tumult ; indifferent to death, he will search 
along the rows of the dead, he will sniff at the 
heaps of the slain, until he finds his master. The 
dog is truer yet to the longing of its nature. I 
confess that more than once I have been deeply 
moved at the spectacle of a lost dog in your streets. 
I saw last week an English setter, looking for her 



60 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

lost master. How wildly she raced up and down 
the pavement ! How she bounded from side to 
side of the street ! What fear and alarm in the 
rapidity of her motions ! What plaintiveness of 
inquiry looked out of her large liquid eyes ! 
AVhat to her was the crowd ! Hundreds passed 
her, — the fair, the good, the kind ; what were they 
all to her ! Beauty stood looking at her from a 
hundred pitying eyes, but none had his face. A 
score of white hands were stretched to caress her ; 
but his palm was not among them. Many voices 
called coaxingly to her, but her ears heard not the 
music of the one voice. At last it came, — from 
way down the street, a clear ringing call, such as 
her master had sent out a thousand times in the 
crisp stubble, calling her " to heel." It made my 
blood leap to hear that free, hearty cry, suggestive 
of gun and thicket and autumnal-tinted woods, 
lifting itself up amid the din of your pent-up 
streets. She heard it, the splendid creature ! 
Amid the clash of iron-shod hoofs, the jar and 
jolt of car and cart, the pattering rain of hurry- 
ing feet, the familiar cry of that loved voice came 
to her. An instant, — as if to recover from the 
shock of so glad a surprise breaking in upon her 
despair, — an instant she stood the picture of re- 
lief, of happiness, and then away she bounded 
and went streaming down the street. I did not ' 
see the meeting, but I can imagine it. Love 



CHAEACTERISTICS OF A GREAT LOVE. 61 

was with love once more, and therefore love was 
happy. 

If this is true of love, if we find this mark char- 
acterizing affection among the lower animals, with 
what an intensity may we not with reason expect 
it to be found in the case of man. And in very 
truth we do. Love finds its happiness in compan- 
ionship, its misery in separation. Home is born 
from this impulse. Married life rests upon it, as 
the open flower upon its parent stem. Wlien two 
hearts love each other greatly, there is no higher 
symbol of pain to them than separation. To have 
the loved face nigh, to be able to sit and gaze 
upon it at will, to see the loved form moving 
about, to hear the voice whose tones are sweeter 
to your ears than sweet music, to feel the gentle 
touch which can make the head forget its aching 
and the heart its troubles, — this is happiness, this 
is love's content. Grant it this, and poverty is not 
dreadful. Grant it this, and sickness and pain can 
be borne. Grant it this, and even the dungeon 
loses its terrors, and death itself, if shared together, 
becomes an eternal embrace. But to be divided, 
to be separated ; to wake and not see what makes 
waking blessed ; to sleep and not feel the over- 
shadowing security that makes slumber restful ; 
to eat bread unsweetened by sharing of it with 
one beloved; to listen in vain for the desired 
voice ; to watch and not find with all searching 



62 MUSIG-HALL SERMONS. 

the dear face ; to open the door a thousand thnes 
and never see the loved form standing on the 
threshold ; to sicken and crave a nurse you cannot 
have ; to die divided, separated, apart, — this to a 
great love is misery ; this it cannot bear, for this 
would break its heart. We are all agreed then, I 
suppose, friends, that one of the characteristics of 
a great love is found in the existence of a strong 
desire to be near, to live near, to die near, the ob- 
ject of its affection. 

Another characteristic of a great love is the 
presence of a desire to serve the object of its 
affection. 

Love is full of services. It is tireless in minis- 
try. It is always giving itself away. It is a busy, 
active, energetic principle. It finds its happiness 
in working and spending. What will not the 
mother do for her child ? what the wife for her 
husband ? Let the recollection of your childhood, 
let the experience of to-day, testify. I have seen 
many a pearly hand, fair and plump and sweet 
to look upon ; many a palm of pink have I seen, 
and fingers whose purity rivalled the gems they 
wore ; but the hands that live in recollection fairer 
than they all are the lean, thin, toil- wrinkled hands 
of my mother. They were once full and fair and 
white as any lady's, and all of us, her children, 
knew how and why they had become thin and 
worn. They were made so by toiling for us ; the 



CHARACTERISTICS OF A GREAT LOVE. 63 

dear old weariless hands, without ornament save 
the one plain circle of gold worn through all the 
years, from marriage-day to grave-day, — what had 
they not done for us all ? They had lifted us, and 
. fed us, and clothed us, and soothed us, and labored 
for us unceasingly, and to-day they stand in recol- 
lection the symbols and type of serving love, — 
those aged, shaking hands of my mother. It was 
love, friends, that made them active ; it was love, 
friends, that made them tireless. And what a joy 
it was, when she was aged, to sit and hold them, 
and smooth them, and caress them ! And now that 
they are folded in everlasting rest, they live in 
vision with me, and will live until I clasp them 
once again upon the everlasting shore. 

And so it is with love everywhere. It lives to 
labor ; it lives to give itself away. There is no 
such thing as indolent love. Look within your 
heart, friend, and see if this is not true. If you love 
any one truly and deeply, the cry of your heart is 
to spend and be spent in the loved one's service. 
Love would die if it could not benefit. Its keenest 
sujffering is met when it finds itself unable to 
assist. What man could see the woman he loved 
lack anything, and be unable to give it to her, and 
not suffer ? Why, love makes one a slave. It toils 
night and day, refusing all wages and all reward 
save the smile of the one unto whom it is bound, 
in whose service it finds its delight, at whose feet 



64 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

it alone discovers its heaven. No danger that 
language can be too strong or statement too fer- 
vent which is used to portray the services of love. 
By cradle and couch, by sick-bed and coffin, in 
hut and palace, the ministries of love are being 
wrought. The eyes of all behold them ; the hearts 
of all are moved at the spectacle. 

The third characteristic of a great love is seen in 
this : it desires union with its object in thought, 
if not in body. 

An old poet wrote, "Love never separates." 
If you will reflect, you will be surprised at the 
prominent place imagination occupies in our affec- 
tions. The body is subject to the laws of matter. 
It is subject to the bondage of locality. Place and 
time tyrannize over it. Not so with the spirit. 
Place and time do not affect its movements. It 
roams free at will. Its limitations are found, not 
in outward things, but in its own desires, and only 
in these. I will suppose some stranger far from 
his home is with us to-day. His body is here, but 
where is his mind ? If the physical represents 
him, then is he a thousand miles from his home : 
but if his mind and soul represent him, then he is 
not here himself; he has passed out from our 
midst along the line of our thought, as I speak ; 
he has entered his own house ; he stands with his 
wife and children at this moment. Indeed, love 
never journeys unaccompanied by love. When we 



CHARACTERISTICS OF A GREAT LOVE. 65 

have found one face and form above all faces 
and forms on the earth, we never are parted from 
it. Wherever we journey, that face journeys with 
us. The whole world is to it only what a frame is 
to a picture ; in the centre of all things which we 
gaze at, that one bright face is seen. AVhen love 
is great and pure enough to become a sublime 
passion, it has found that larger liberty which the 
spirits know and enjoy. As the face of God is 
ever present to the eye of a great faith, so the face 
of the dear one is always present to the eye of 
a great love. Indeed, this is love's consolation. 
For who of us could part from those we love, if 
parting meant separation ? Who could let go the 
lingering hand, if from our clasp it dropped into 
forgetfulness ? 

In addition to this desire on the part of love to 
have the object of its affection always with it, 
there is to be added the stronger craving for union 
hereafter. 

This craving grows out of our immortality. It 
is because we feel persuaded that we shall live 
that we feel that we must love, and if we love, then 
must love have its own. It is to this that Noon 
Talfourd alludes, when in reply to the pathetic in- 
terrogation of Clemantlie, Avhether they sliould 
meet again beyond the grave, he makes her lover 
exclaim : " I have asked that question of the hills, 
that look eternal ; of the streams, that lucid flow 



66 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

forever ; of the stars, among whose fields of azure 
my freed spirit will walk in glory ; — all was dumb. 
But when I look into thy living face, there is 
something in the love that mantles through its 
beauty that will not wholly perish ; yes, we shall 
meet again, Clemanthe." 

Whatever doubt the Greek had two thousand 
years ago touching immortality, we have none to- 
day. What the Pagan dreamed the Christian 
knows. The Bible has brought life and immor- 
tality to light, and made our earthly existence not 
the full measure of, but only the introduction to, 
life. Eternity being ours, every great love lives 
in constant reference to it. Its gaze, like that of 
Evangeline, is forever directed ahead. The span of 
human life is too brief to satisfy its longing. The 
husband and wife expect to meet beyond the 
grave. The mother will find her child among 
the angels. The lover knows that somewhere on 
the plains of heaven — waiting for him and ex- 
pectant — he will meet her whom his soul loveth. 
Tea, love shall find, and finding keep its own for- 
ever, beyond the tomb. This is its prayer, its 
hope, its solace. Wherever in all the world you 
find great affection, with it you find a great faith 
in union and happiness in heaven. 

One other characteristic, and my description of 
great love will be complete. I refer to its unself- 
ishness. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF A GREAT LOVE. 67 

Little loves are selfish. They are forever ap- 
propriating, never bestowing. They are full of 
mouths to eat, but they have no hands to earn. 
They take continually, but never give. Little loves 
are exacting, querulous, suspicious. They vex 
and torment and sting. They are happy only 
when full of prosperity, of health, of flattery. 
When brought to the test of deprivation, poverty, 
absence, and sacrifice, they fail. But great affec- 
tion is unselfish. It is happier in giving than 
receiving ; or, rather, it receives its happiness in 
giving. Great love is even-tempered, trustful, 
constant. It is happy in poverty, happy in self- 
denial, happy in every crisis of its career. Money 
is nothing, fame is nothing, when put over against 
the one to whom it is bound. It is even willing 
to die for its object. This is not imagination. It 
finds its illustration in your own feelings, friends. 
I select any father in this audience; a hard-work- 
ing man, who, by thirty years of toil, has scraped to- 
gether a handsome property. That property means 
a gTeat deal to him. It means credit, reputation, 
an easy mind, support and rest in his old age. 
But dear as it is to him, let one of his children — 
the first-born, now almost come to man's estate, or 
the golden-headed prattler that fills the house 
with sweet noises — be stricken with sickness and 
threatened with death, and is there a father here 
that would not give every farthing of his property 



68 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

for the life of his child ? Yea, you would take it all 
up, — store, houses, lands, stocks, and money, — and 
give it all for the life of your child. The existence 
of unselfish love, of love that sacrifices all things 
for the object of its affection, is not, as you see, 
therefore, so rare a thing as some at the first 
thought might think. Indeed, I imagine that 
death itself would not be able to daunt the cour- 
age of affection which is common among the noble 
and the good. Here my description ends. Here 
it should end ; for what greater love is there than 
that one should die for his friend? 

I have now characterized love. I have pointed 
out to you the marks by which it is distinguished. 
You have assented to my description, because it 
was based upon what you yourselves, to a greater 
or less degree, have felt. I ask you now to apply 
this description of a true and great affection to 
that love which you profess to have toward God. 
Is your love such that nearness to Him means 
joy, and absence distress ? Do you love to serve 
Him? — for that is the second test of love. Separ- 
ated from Him in person, unable to look upon His 
proper face, do you find His face as a source of 
delight constantly with you in memory ? Is your 
love unselfish, or do you love Him as a means of 
securing His favor, and receiving assistance from 
Him in the hour of extremest need ? Do. you love 
Him in order to have Him, or do you love Him 



CHARACTERISTICS OF A GREAT LOVE. 69 

because you have Him? And is your love for 
God a love that not only craves nearness to Him 
now, but longs for eternal union with Him here- 
after ? I do not say, Christian friends, that you 
shall not be saved unless you can answer all of 
these questions in the affirmative. It is not for 
me or any other man to arrogate to himself famil- 
iarity with the eternal counsels of God, or say at 
\vhat point the going forth of His mercy stops. I 
only say, that if, in the light of this analysis, your 
love for God is not distinguished by these marks, 
then it is not a great love, then you do not love 
Him as you should. I do not wonder that you 
are timid and faltering in prayer; it is only a 
perfect love that casts out fear, and you are not 
made perfect in love. 

Your evident duty is to set yourself at once to 
apprehend God. To know Him is to love Him, 
and your not loving Him shows that you do not 
know Him. Leave all other studies, I pray you, 
and study God. You fear because your faith is 
weak, and your faith is weak because those views 
of the Divine nature, and that apprehension of its 
inherent loveliness from which faith is born, and 
on which it feeds, are not with you. You will never 
grow in grace until you grow in knowledge. 

I have said thus much to such of you as are 

Christians. I wish now to address another class, 

—you who may or may not be Christians, but who 



70 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

have not as yet proclaimed your spiritual condi- 
tion. I do not think, — and in this we agree, — 
I do not think that joining a church or assenting 
to a creed will make you a Christian. Neither 
did Christ. I often think that creeds and cere- 
monies serve as much to conceal as to reveal the 
true point at issue between the soul and God ; 
because no language can describe God. Human 
utterance is not worthy of the Divine lips, not 
adequate to express the Divine thought. I have 
never been able to frame a sentence which, as a 
description, was equal to the Being to be described. 
Even the Spirit suffers in His efforts to communi- 
cate with man, because of the meagreness of those 
means afforded by human letters. In mood, in 
vision, in temper of soul, and not by letter, does 
He to-day reveal Himself to us. The great com- 
mandment to-day, friends, as of old time, is this : 
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart and soul and strength, and thy neighbor 
as thyself." That is the real point. Upon this, 
as Jesus said, " all the law and -the prophets 
hang." If examining committees had always kept 
this in mind, and held the candidates up to the 
line of it, we should never have had proslavery 
churches or rum-drinking churches. The time is 
coming when a man's feelings toward his pastor 
and the officers and members of the church will 
be considered better evidence of piety than his 



CHARACTERISTICS OF A GREAT LOVE. 71 

belief or disbelief of the doctrine of election. It 
is regarded, I believe, a great heresy not to believe 
that there is such a being as Satan ; but, after my 
way of thinking, it is a greater heresy yet to be- 
lieve in him and act like him ! Affection is what 
holds a family together. Love makes home. And 
the time will come, I feel persuaded, when relig- 
ious congregations will be held together by the 
same divine attraction, the same celestial bond. 
Love for God and men will be the basis of church 
organization, and not intellectual interpretation of 
inspired truth. Not but that the interpretation 
will be held as essential, but it will not be placed 
at the top of the column, as it is now. It will be 
placed lower down, where it should be located, 
where Christ located it; while that love to God 
and man, upon which everything else hangs, as 
clusters hang to a vine out of which whatever of 
sweetness they have comes, will occupy the fore- 
most position. 

But if the question which concerns your highest 
happiness here and hereafter, friend, is not touch- 
ing technicalities of creed, of ceremony, of intel- 
lectual interpretation of selected passages out of 
God's Word, what is the question, what is the 
real vital point, which gives emphasis to every re- 
ligious discussion, and weights every occasion like 
this with solemn significance to your soul ? I 
assure you, friend, that the great question is this. 



72 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

''Do you love God?'' Or, to put it in another 
form, speaking to you as a child of God, as you 
are by creation, '' Do you love your Heavenly Fa- 
ther?" This query, observe, is not addressed to 
your heads, but to your hearts. My target is not 
your brain. I do not care how or what you think, 
— what your mental state, what your intellectual 
position is, — I am making a central shot at your 
feelings. I wish to know, simply and solely, how 
you feel, what is the state of your heart, what is 
your emotional position before God to-day. I ask 
you, then, briefly, directly, solemnly, '' Do you love 
GodV 

I am aware, friends, that the answers may, in 
many cases, be given without due reflection and 
from misunderstanding. And I will imagine that 
certain classes, through their representatives, put 
in their answers in the affirmative, and the reasons 
therefor, to the end that we may examine into 
said reasons, and decide upon their soundness or 
lack of soundness. The first I interrogate answers 
in the affirmative with alacrity. His reply is 
quick and decided. I ask him for proof, to ex- 
amine himself for evidence ; and his response is, 
" Why, sir, of course I love God. I take a walk 
every pleasant morning in the fields. I see God in 
the fiowers, grasses, and running streams. I hear 
Him in the song of birds and hum of bees. I see 
Him in the hills and the rolling waves. Why, sir. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF A GREAT LOVE. 73 

I delight in Him and His works. What better 
proof could I have or give ? " 

To this man, representing a large class, I reply : 
" This is not necessarily the proof of love, friend ; 
it is only the evidence of an admiration. Esthetic 
appreciation is not piety. A pagan Greek, with 
the Grecian sensitiveness to the loveliness of form, 
the beauty of color, and the harmony of sounds, 
might feel, did probably feel, centuries before 
Christ, all that you have described. And yet you 
would not claim that a pagan could meet the 
gospel requirement five hundred years before the 
gospel was proclaimed. Your love is the artistic, 
not the Christian love. Is it the flower, or the 
Creator of the flower, that you love ? Is it the sky, 
or the Almighty Former of it, that you admire ? 
Is it the wave, with its masses of green, its emer- 
ald curvature, and its crest of moving snow, before 
which you stand delighted ; or have you that spir- 
itual vision which sees within the hollow of the 
rolling billow the moving of a Power mightier 
than the wave, the reflection of a Eace whiter 
than its crest of snow ? Are you a worshipper of 
Nature only, or of Nature's God ? " 

I ask another, who represents poetical rever- 
ence, if he loves God, and he responds, " Cer- 
tainly ; I have from childhood." I press him for 
proof, and he replies : " I find it in my feelings. 
I enter a church : I feel a hush come over my 

4 



74 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

soul ; the vaulted roof, the darkened air, the re- 
sounding organ-roll, the measured chant of choir 
and priest, the subdued responses, the kneel- 
ing suppliants, the solemn liturgy, — these affect 
me. I bow, I kneel, I sob, I worship. Is not this 
sufficient evidence that I love God?" "No," I 
respond, '' it is not. It may be worship ; it may- 
be only superstition. It may be the result of 
piety, potential and permanent ; it may be only 
the result of poetical reverence, inoperative and 
transient. Saul felt all this before the marvellous 
light fell on him from above. Luther felt all this 
before he was converted. A pagan devotee might 
feel all this his lifetime through, and die unrec- 
onciled to God. Beware of mistaking a mere 
poetical frenzy for deep, divinely inspired religious 
conviction. 

I ask the bigot if he loves God, and he starts 
back and gathers himself up as if insulted. " Love 
God ! " he shouts ; " of course I do. Do I not stand 
up for Jesus in the midst of a wicked and perverse 
generation ? Did I ever baptize a man unless I 
buried him three feet under water ? Did I ever 
tolerate any looseness in doctrine ? Did I ever 
withhold my hand when the Lord commanded me 
to smite ? Did I ever allow any man to come to 
the communion-table unless he believed in elec- 
tion and total depravity and immersion ? Don't 
I hate God's enemies ? A pretty man you are to 



CHAEACTERISTICS OF A GREAT LOVE. 75 

ask a leader in Israel if lie loves God ! '' I might 
proceed with my enumeration of typical characters, 
each a representative of a class ; but why do it ? It 
is a thankless and a grievous task, — this laying 
bare of foibles, this showing up of human weakness, 
blundering, and mistakes. AVhy do it at all ? you 
say. I will tell you. I cut into these assertions, 
being made on all sides of me, in the Church and 
out of the Church, because I believe them to be 
unsupported by Scripture and life. I cut into 
them because I believe them to be false and 
hollow at the heart. The seeds, the principles of 
divine germination and growth, are not in them. 
I wish to puncture these crimson bubbles of a 
delusive hope, which are being blown up by a 
thousand mouths and cast into the air, in order 
that men may behold their emptiness at their 
collapse. If they cannot stand our examination, 
how shall they endure the examination of the 
last day ! If the feeble breath of our mouth 
shakes them, what will come to them when that 
great wind, which blows only once, but blows for 
all, bears down upon them ! I ask you all to re- 
member that before the eye of the All-Seeing your 
lives, your hearts, stand naked and exposed to- 
day. 

And now, friends and strangers, I come to you 
wdth this inquiry, " Do you love God ? " That He 
loves you, you know. The mercies you enjoy day 



76 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

by day prove it. If you love Him, do you love 
Him greatly? Is your love for Him a serving love, 
a self-sacrificing love, a craving love, an enduring 
love ! If you do not love Him as yet, I put upon 
you the responsibility of deciding to-day. The 
Sabbath, which you supposed in the morning was 
to be an ordinary Sabbath, shall be distinguish^ed 
because of the opportunity it offers, and the obli- 
gation it imposes. It shall be distinguished in 
memory, so long as you have the power of recol- 
lection, as the day in which God made a certain 
overture, as the day in which that overture was 
accepted or rejected. The Lord comes to you 
now, right here, at this moment, and says to you, 
" My son, my daughter, give me thy hearty It is 
your love He demands. And what, pray, is your 
answer ? Do you accept or reject His overtures ? 
That great statesman, Daniel Webster, — the 
man you loved and honored, w^ho made your 
influence continental, and your name known 
wherever the English language is spoken, — 
when an inquisitive friend, wishing to explore 
the secret of that great intellect, asked him, 
"What, Mr. Webster, is the greatest question 
you have ever considered ? " stood for a mo- 
ment in grave silence, and then, turning toward 
the speaker, said, '' The greatest question I have 
ever considered, sir, is my personal relation to 
my God ! " I seem to hear that voice sounded 



CHARACTERISTICS OF A GREAT LOVE. 77 

forth in solemn cadence from the eternal world, 
culminating over this vast array of heads, saying 
to us in even greater emphasis than he used when 
on the earth, " The greatest question that you can 
consider, ye residents of the city where I once 
lived, is your personal relation to your God." 



78 ' MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

SEEMON V. 

POWEE OF THE GOSPEL TO SAVE. 

** And think not to say within yourselves, We have Ahraham 
to our Father ; for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones 
to raise up children unto Abraham." — Matthew iii. 9. 

THE Pharisees were egotists, and their ego- 
tism went out especially in the direction of 
their religious privileges. They regarded them- 
selves as favored of God to the exclusion of all 
others. To be a Jew was to have spiritual oppor- 
tunities enjoyed by the citizens of no other nation. 
This egotism, this pride, this vanity, was based 
upon their history. They had been especially 
blessed of God. More than once had they been 
saved, as a nation, by the direct and miraculous 
interposition of Providence. They regarded them- 
selves, therefore, as favorites of Heaven, and on 
the strength of this estimation became proud, self- 
asserting, vainglorious. It never occurred to them 
that others could be saved besides themselves, 
and this led them to underrate and despise every- 
body not connected ancestrally with them. This 
was what John, in the words of the text, so 
bravely rebuked. They judged men by their ex- 
ternals, by their accidental connections; and he, 
as a messenger of God, resented this judgment, and 



POWER OF THE GOSPEL TO SAVE. 79 

asserted the true principle which underlies all 
human relationship, whether of one man to another 
or of all men to God. 

Now, human nature should not be measured 
by what is accidental, but by what is essential. 
Man's attributes never gauge man. Put all 
the powers and faculties, all the vigor and 
force, a man has together, and the man is larger 
than they all. Back of all these, and within 
them, as the face is back of and within the 
veil hanging in front of it, is the man himself. 
The human element in humanity is more precious 
than all else connected with it; the only thing 
about us, perhaps, that God loves. For what are 
man's strength and wisdom, what his cunning and 
skill, and what is the aggregate result of these be- 
fore God ? Does He love the student because of 
his thinking, the artist because he has an eye for 
colors and proportion, the mechanic because of his 
skill, or any one because of his gifts and abilities ? 
The question answers itself. It is evident that 
the Divine regard for the human race is based upon 
something deeper, holier, more universal than these 
accidental peculiarities. It was not for these that 
Christ died ; not for these that God resolved to 
save the race ; not for these that the Holy Spirit 
is at work to-day. 

It seems to me that God's love for the race 
comes under the same law as our love for one an- 



80 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

other. "We admire talents, we are fascinated with 
beauty, we honor ability to perform ; but love feeds 
on a deeper root than these. The man is dearer 
to us than his abihties ; the woman more pre- 
cious than her beauty. These are the accidental, 
not the essential, elements of our friends : we are 
conscious that we love something more than all 
these. When our friends lie on the bed of sick- 
ness, the vigor of the mind and the beauty of 
the countenance gone, weak, pallid, senseless, our 
hearts still cry out for them the same. It is the 
soul, I claim, that calleth unto soul in that dread 
hour. It is that awful something in us — call 
it spirit, being, essence, what you please — that 
stands upon the edge of an endless shadow or 
a limitless glory, stripped of earthly attributes, 
mighty only in itself. It is this we love ; it is this 
that never dies, chosen for and mated unto what 
was like unto itself forever and forever. This we 
know is the law that governs human love. The 
same, even to a greater extent, is true touching the 
Divine love. It is neither talents, nor beauty, nor 
any accidental attributes that He loves; for He 
loves those not distinguished for these, and He 
loves us when these depart. When you lie, friend, 
emaciated and helpless, no muscular strength, no 
mental vigor, no nervous force in all your system ; 
when memory, reason, imagination, and every fac- 
ulty that to-day distinguishes you, refuse to act ; 



POWER OF THE GOSPEL TO SAVE. 81 

when beauty, grace, and it may be friends, have 
all left you, — still the love of God will hover over 
you as the parent bird will come and hover over 
the old deserted nest. You may survive your 
friends, but you will never survive the love of 
God. That lasts. What is this something in us 
that God loves ? Tell me who can. It is not 
ability. Why, I sat upon your Common one 
night last summer, and an idiot came and sat be- 
side me. He had no sense, no thought, no feeling. 
He gibbered and drooled. His laughter had no 
meaning, his gestures no significance. He rose at 
length, and, muttering to himself, he shambled off 
into the darkness. I followed him, and saw him 
make his bed upon the sward, and fall asleep with 
a thousand unnoted stars above him. Then I 
left him. Did God leave him? Did that poor 
idiot really sleep there alone, or did the heavenly 
bands stand round him while he slumbered, as if 
he were really precious ? And if they did, what 
for ? By whose request or order were they there ? 
And what was there for God to love in him ? No 
faculty, no ability, no vigor. What then? I 
answer, the soul ; the clouded, the eclipsed soul ; 
the spirit darkened ; the human element without a 
faculty to advertise it ; the simple, inherent like- 
ness of the Deity. 

In the light of this supposition we see how 
Christ could love aU men. AH that had the 

4* p 



82 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

human nature shared in His affection. Toward 
the high and low, rich and poor, civilized and 
barbarian, He felt the same ; and for the same 
reason, wherever was the human element, there, 
wedded to it, was the Divine regard. Humanity 
was the object of Divinity. 

Now, my criticism of society is, that it is as yet 
so little Christianized that it judges chiefly by the 
externals. We prize men for their abilities, we 
honor them for their talents, we admire them for 
their skill and taste, we gauge them, in short, by 
what they do or are able to do. The commercial 
standard is the one by which our hands measure 
manhood. A man must be worth something to 
society, to commerce, to art, or we do not regard 
him. He must be useful in order to be esteemed. 
Now, my point is, that from the Christian point of 
view this is all wrong. Christ did not die for the 
talented. He did not visit the earth in order to 
save those of great abilities. He does not stop to 
ascertain how much a person is worth to society 
before He offers salvation to him. The commer- 
cial standard is not the celestial standard of re- 
gard. He did not love man because he was great 
in capacity, and would become a very useful agent 
to him. This is a utilitarianism such as men use 
in their judgment one of another. God discards 
it. The ear of Infinite Love never listened to the 
whisper of utility. Strength is no more His than 



POWER OF THE GOSPEL TO SAVE. 83 

weakness. The grain of sand and the planet alike 
belong to Him. Man and angels are equally dear. 

I look abroad over the world, and find the earth 
belted with distinctions. I look again, and not a 
line is visible. God has wiped them all out. His 
love is telescopic, seeing but one object at a time. 
All created things are brought to a focus upon 
His heart at the same instant. As regards men, 
all are dear to Him. Loving them, not by reason 
of what is accidental to them, but by reason of 
what is generic, His heart gathers them all into itself, 
as a motlier, upon her return home after absence, 
gathers to her bosom the shining heads of all her 
clustering children. So it comes about, friend, 
that that barbarian in some distant benighted land 
has a place in the bosom of God equal to your 
own. Your election does not exclude him. So, 
too, it comes about that all the poor, feeble weak- 
lings are loved of God. And also all those no- 
account men and women, as the world judges, who 
add too little to the art and wealth and culture of 
the world to be noted, whose only use seems to be 
to do a certain class of low but necessary drudgery, 
and then fill unnoted graves, — all these are sharers 
with you in the Divine regard. 

Perhaps the best proof of this is to be found in 
your own sense of what is expected. For who of 
you would be satisfied if I should preach a God 
other than this ? What a Deity that would be 



84 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

who should love people because of their talents, 
their skill, their personal endowments ! Who 
could preach a gospel applicable only to scholars, 
artists, merchants, and trained mechanics ; or, if it 
was preached, who of you would hear it ? You 
would unanimously reject it. You would assert 
that a love so limited, so contracted in its opera- 
tions could not be divine. Such an affection 
you would declare is unworthy of God; such a 
Christianity is unworthy of Christ. The water 
that could float only large ships, while it allowed 
the little ones to sink, you would say, is unfit for 
the purposes of commerce ; and the salvation that 
could save only large souls, while the smaller ones 
were lost, would be inadequate to meet the moral 
and spiritual exigencies of the race. No; the 
Deity must love all, and love all alike. And this 
is the same as saying that He must love man as 
man, irrespective of accidental bestowments ; love 
him because he is human ; love him simply and 
solely because he belongs to a beloved race. 

Ah, friends, that is it ; and that is just what 
God does. He loves man simply and solely 
because he is human, because he belongs to a 
beloved race. This is common ground for all on 
which to stand in hope before God. Here the sav- 
age can stand. Here the poor slave finds a foot- 
ing, and the poor sin-debauched denizens of North 
Street tenements get a safe and sure lodgment. 



POWER OF THE GOSPEL TO SAVE. 85 

This is blood-bouglit ground, purchased for all on 
Calvary, and free to all. Nor is there any other 
ground for any. Not because. he has talents, nor 
because he can contribute much to society, is a 
man beloved of God ; but simply because he is a 
man, — His own child, the son of His creation. 

The true worth and dignity of man, then, as 
revealed in the light of the Cross, consist not in 
any accidental possessions, but in that nature be- 
stowed at birth upon all alike. It is this nature 
which men overlook, and fail to enter in that 
column which represents kinship and obligation. 
Hence they ignore the fraternal relation of man 
with man. If they help the lowly, it is in a 
patronizing sort of way, and not as a man helps his 
own brother. They despise the very ones they 
benefit. They see no dignity, no value, in people 
who cannot push their way in the world, or better 
their low estate. They do not respect those whom 
they support, nor love those whom they are help- 
ing to make lovely. But in spite of the good 
such people do, they do not do their full duty. 
Their hearts are not lifted to the level of Christian 
requirement. Patronage is not brotherhood. The 
poor are not to be treated and thought of as a 
lower class of creatures providentially placed in 
our charge to control and educate. They are to 
be regarded as common sharers with us in one and 
the same human nature > and this fact is to be 



86 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

regarded by us as suJB&cient, not alone to save 
them from contempt, but to place them, as broth- 
ers and sisters, among the foremost of the earth. 
In our age the Christian public have fallen in love 
with the lowly. Every church must have its pet 
institution, acting through its agents upon the 
lowest strata of society. Culture and fashion re- 
fresh and amuse themselves by studying the prob- 
lem of vice as expressed in the jpersonnel of the 
alley and the gutter. Far be it from me to find 
fault at this. Not mine the wit to laugh at laven- 
der kids and real lace in North Street. I instance 
this only in the way of suggestion and warning. 
By so much as the spirit of patronage enters into 
our charity, it is not Christian. All this might be 
done as truly by pride as by humility. Many a 
man would pick a beggar out of the gutter and 
have him carefully tended, who would never shake 
hands with a mechanic on the streets, or invite a 
modest clerk to his parlors. It is easier for pride 
to help a very bad man than it is for it to acknowl- 
edge that a very poor one is its equal. What 
should be done, and what I pray all you who are 
rich and talented to do, is to drill yourselves into a 
full, cordial assent to the doctrine that God has made 
of one blood all the nations of the earth, and will 
at last call them all alike into judgment ; that it 
is human nature, and not circumstance, that con- 
stitutes the bond of relationship ; and that no one 



POWER OF THE GOSPEL TO SAVE. 87 

should ever for one instant confound patronage 
with philanthropy. 

Why do I insist at such length upon this dis- 
tinction ? AVell, I will tell you. The civilization 
which the world to-day fosters is utilitarian. 
Utility is its god. Whatever can assist in the 
development of the material resources, in aesthetic 
culture, in external adornment, power, and grace, is 
prized. Whatever does not directly do this is con- 
temned. What is he good for ? Wliat can he do ? 
How much can he give ? These are the questions 
upon every lip touching our fellow-men. Amid 
such a state of things a powerful pressure is put 
upon us to worship skill, faculty, force, — the ca- 
pacities or attributes of the man, and not the man 
himself. If a man has not capacity, w^ho cares for 
him ? If he cannot supply society some needed 
skill, or tact, or grace, what does he amount to ? 
He is a nonentity in our civilization, and who 
cares for nonentities ? I submit to you all if this 
is not, in the main, a just analysis of our civiliza- 
tion. Its object is to make scholars, poets, orators, 
skilled mechanics, successful merchants ; and the 
rewards it offers are the ones best calculated to 
stimulate men to supply what it needs. Whoever 
knocks at the door of society is asked, What can 
you do ? what can you give me ? Attributes, and 
not nature, give him admittance. To be an im- 
mortal soul is not enough ; you must be able to 



88 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

model the clay, and color the canvas, and rule the 
forces of commerce, or no one thinks of you as 
worthy of regard. And this evil, this inadequate 
estimation of men is so woven in and connected 
with what is right and essential, that it is univer- 
sally accepted as the true one ; and yet I hold it 
to be radically false. God does not value man by 
this rule. Man was worth very little to society 
when Christ came. Judged by the utilitarian, 
the New England rule, ninety-five hundredths of 
all the race were of no account. Yet God saw 
something in them to love. In the eyes of the 
Saviour the great mass of ordinary, uncultivated, 
unskilled people that swarmed over the globe 
were not lacking dignity. There was something 
so lofty, so divine in human nature, even in its 
lost estate, — something so essentially noble in man, 
however debased he might be, — that none might 
despise him. "Whosoever shall say unto his 
brother, Eaca, shall be in danger of the council ; 
but whosoever shall say. Thou fool, shall be in 
danger of hell-fire." All this seems very trite to 
us ; but when He spoke these words they were 
startlingly novel. No other man, prophet or sage, 
had ever inculcated such views of human nature. 
In them we are taught God's estimate of man as 
man, independent of all his surroundings. 

Now, friend, you may not accept Christ as a 
Saviour, you may not desire to enter upon those 



POWER OF THE GOSPEL TO SAVE. 89 

higher experiences enjoyed by the mind and soul 
of him who believes Jesus to be divine ; but you 
must at least admit that He first and in the su- 
premest sense insisted on the dignity and worth 
of the individual man, be he what and where he 
might. If you are a humanitarian, a believer in 
and lover of your kind, come with me, and we 
will sit down amicably together at the foot of the 
cross, and exchange reverent and loving thoughts of 
Him who has opened our eyes and made us see a 
brother's look in every human face. We will talk 
of Him whom the common people loved, whom 
the religious tyrants of His day hated, whom the 
bigots slew ; and we will take this book, — call it 
a record, call it a biography, call it the Bible, call 
it what you please, I will not quarrel with you 
over a name, — and we will drink, until our souls 
are filled, from this fountain of wisdom, humanity, 
and love. O thou precious Book, great charter 
of human rights, proof and pledge of a universal 
brotherhood of man with man the wide world 
over, New England must never forget thee ! Tor 
without thee, she would be like an army without 
a banner, a prophet without inspiration, a well 
without a fountain. 

The best proof that Christ was more than a 
mere man is found, as I think, in His generous con- 
ception of human nature. To Him every man was 
an extraordinary being. In His eyes no one was 



90 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

mediocre, every one was worth dying for. Who- 
ever wronged one, whoever underrated one, it were 
better for that man that a millstone were hanged 
about his neck and he were cast into the depth of 
the sea. Now, such an estimate of man could 
never spring from a purely human source. It never 
had ; it never has. No one who does not pro- 
foundly realize man's connection with God can 
feel thus. You must see a tree against an azure 
sky in order to be impressed with the curved 
symmetry of its outline. Its beauty can be seen 
only when a glory is back of it. And so it is 
with man. You must see him with the glory of 
his origin and destiny back of him before you can 
realize how great and exalted he is. You must 
see a king before you can understand what it is to 
be a king s son. Now, Christ invariably saw man 
in this light, — saw him in all his divine connec- 
tions, saw him in his possibilities, — and, seeing him 
thus, had the fullest faith in him. He saw of the 
travail of his soul and was satisfied. By an un- 
fortunate and terrible shock man had been cast 
down. He was like a star thrown off from its 
orbit. He had lost the restraining attraction of a 
central orb, and had become a vagrant through the 
heavens. He was a force still, but an undirected, 
disorderly force amid the harmonious forces of the 
universe. He must be replaced in his old posi- 
tion, feel again the force of proper connections. 



POWER OF THE GOSPEL TO SAVE. 91 

and move once more along the divinely prescribed 
line. All this he saw ; all this he determined to 
do ; all this he is able to do. I have perfect con- 
fidence in the power of Christ to save. No degree 
of sinfulness, no accumulation of vices, appalls him. 
I am no optimist : I know how wicked and vile 
and brutal human nature is. My ears have heard 
the cursing, my eyes have seen the filthiness, of 
men. But what is sin over against God ? How 
easily and quickly he can crush it ! Conversion 
is a fact. Some of the worst people on the earth 
have been changed by the grace of God. It is be- 
yond denial. The Divine origin of Christianity is 
not shown in its history alone, but by its every- 
day effects. The proof that Christ is a Saviour is 
not found alone in the New Testament. It is 
found in my own heart. A sceptic might as well 
deny that I have memory as to deny my religious 
experiences. The divine results Avrought out and 
being wrought out in me prove that Jesus is 
Divine. I know that the waters in the old family 
well at home are cool and sweet, for I have drunk 
them for years. Do you think, young men, that 
any clever writer or orator in Boston can persuade 
me that they are stagnant and unfit ? How then 
can they shake my faith in those living w^aters 
which my soul has drunk for years, and which, be- 
cause of their goodness, my soul will continue to 
drink, until I die ? 



92 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

Now, friends, permit me to say tliat I have 
faith — the same faith that Christ had — in human 
nature ; not in your nature, or mine only, but in 
that common nature given of God to all men. 
I know that it is not what it should he, but I 
know it can and shall become what it should be. 
No one is so ignorant, so vile, so debased, as to 
suggest a shadow of doubt to my mind touching 
what is possible. Summon the vicious of your 
city, let them come cursing and swearing into this 
hall, until the seats you occupy are crowded with 
their turbulence and wrangling, and, looking into 
their faces, devoid of reverence, suggestive only 
of neglect, of deceit, of the lowest order of thievish 
cunning, I will say, 'Trom these stones God is 
able to raise up children unto Abraham." And if 
you ask me for the reason of the faith that is in 
me, I will respond. My hope is built upon the 
power of God acting upon the nature He has given 
them. 

The true motive — the motive that will outlast 
all other motives, and blossom when the leaves of 
all others have fallen — is that which springs from 
a proper view of man. You must look at human 
nature as Christ looked at it before you can be 
Christlike in your feelings towards it. When you 
realize the Divine origin and connections of a soul, 
its purpose, its value in the eyes of God, and its 
destiny ; when you recall what sympathies it has 



POWER OF THE GOSPEL TO SAVE. 93 

awakened, and what efforts it has caused to be pnt 
forth on the part of heaven ; when you consider 
that every human being is of the same identical 
stock with yourself, and because of these things to 
be loved and assisted, — then will you feel as your 
Lord felt when, out of love for man, He left His 
native heaven to save him. Not as a harsh, 
satirical inquisitor, but as your religious teacher, 
do I now ask, How many of you entertain such 
views of man ? how many of you estimate hu- 
man nature at the Divine standard ? how many 
of you in your thoughts of the poor think pat- 
ronizingly of them, and not fraternally ? If any, I 
exhort you to change your thoughts. Feel your 
relationship with men. Love them, not in a 
restrained, fashionably religious way, but in a 
natural, human way. Select a person who has 
nothing but his soul to recommend him to your 
regard, and say, "He is ignorant and rude and un- 
fortunate ; but, nevertheless, he is my IrotheVy and 
I will do as a brother should by him." And you 
women who are good and lovely and favored by 
fortune, I charge you to remember that there is 
not one of your sex in this city, however low she 
may be, however unfortunate or sinful, that is not 
your sister. Why am I so anxious for this ? Be- 
cause, this relationship once admitted, once felt, 
all needed work will follow. Once let love be 
established, and conduct will be right. Why, love 



94 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

is giving ; you all know that. Calvary was a gift 
from the love of God. As I understand its sig- 
nificance, it did not mean justice, nor law, nor 
penalty, only as these are different phases of love. 
Sacrifice means love. Love is a sharer ; it knows 
no selfishness, it has nothing of its own. It 
craves nothing for itself save the object of its 
affection. Possession of this means happiness, 
contentment, peace. All God craves is the soul. 
All the Christian soul craves is God. Sacrifice is 
not only the end, it is the very inspiration, of love. 
Its symbols are a plough and an altar, — ready to 
toil in the furrow of the one or to be offered 
up on the other. It is brave : it endureth all 
things, and yet it hopeth all things. Its face may 
be pale, — in its lines you can read the story of 
joy deferred, of burdens borne, of wrestlings and 
agony, — but its eyes are forever luminous, and the 
lids never droop save in death. This is love : this 
is the impulse that gave us Christ; this is the 
power, the motive, the energy, that shall yet save 
the world. 

Standing here, girt about with Christians ; re- 
membering what we once were, aliens and stran- 
gers to tlie commonwealth of Israel ; remembering 
what we now are, children by adoption, and heirs 
of the heavenly world, — I should be false to the 
evidences of my senses if I did not heartily believe 
in the power of the gospel to save men. Looking 



POWER OF THE GOSPEL TO SAVE. 95 

over your heads, I behold a sea of faces, thousands 
upon thousands, — faces of Avant, faces haggard 
with remorse, faces emaciated with sickness, faces 
whitening at the near approach of death, — and in 
the look of every face upturned to mine I read the 
interrogation, " Is there rest, is there peace, is there 
hope for me ? " Will you allow me to speak to 
these ? The water which you put aside because you 
are filled will be drained to the last drop by their 
fevered lips. My brothers, — you men witliout gifts, 
without skill, without knowledge, but brothers 
still, — there is rest, there is peace, there is hope, 
for you. You belong to a race beloved of God. 
Your nature is one that the Lord assumed when 
He came to our earth. You are not of godly par- 
entage, you are not in the line of Abrahamic 
descent ; you came from a rebellious stock. You 
may be dull, dull as the clod ; you may be as igno- 
rant of spiritual laws as blocks of wood ; you may 
be only stones : but God is able, even out of such 
material as you present to His hands, to raise up 
children unto Himself. Go abroad then, all of you 
who hear me, with this message. Go forth to your 
new-year's work fired with this splendid hope. 
Preach that men are brothers one of another. 
Act up to your preaching. Trample pride under 
foot. What will pride do for you in your dying 
hour? What will it be when you stand before 
God ? Fling false distinctions that separate men. 



96 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

lifting one class above another, to the winds. Hu- 
manity cannot be graded. It is the same dear, 
precious fact, one and the sa,me forever, before God. 
Whatever separates, divides, antagonizes men, pray 
down, vote down, fight down. Favor only that 
which brings men together, which converges the 
lines of divergent interests, which obliterates in- 
vidious distinctions, which sends the message of 
salvation to every ear, to the end that men may 
be at last joined in heart, and stand like happy 
children, hand clasped in hand, before one Father 
and one Throne. 



THE DIVINE MEASURE OF GIVING. 97 



SEEMON VI. 

THE DIVINE NATFEE AS SHOWN BY THE DIVINE 
MEASURE OF GIVING. 

Ephesians iii. 17-21. 

IN" this passage we have our minds called to the 
nature of God, and the method by which we are 
to understand it. The passage is remarkable be- 
cause of the very redundancy of the expressions 
used. The words seem to push one another, as if 
the writer felt the need of their multiplication in 
order to express what he was struggling to im- 
part. 

The measure of God's giving is man's ability to 
ask and think. Human craving is the standard 
of measurement adopted as the one by which we 
are to get an adequate conception of the Divine 
nature and sympathies. I propose to follow the 
suggestion of the text in my efforts to-day to as- 
sist you to a fuller understanding of the Divine 
nature. 

''Above all that we ask or think" is the lan- 
guage of the text. This is a surprising use of lan- 
guage, — I may say, a surprising assertion. Get 
well in mind the exact phraseology. It is not, 
above all that man is able to ask in justice, or in 

5 G 



98 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

modesty, or even in hope ; it is, above all that 
we are able to ask or think absolutely, — that is, 
above our very ability, unchecked and unmodified 
by all restraining considerations. As I said, the 
use of language is surprising. The assertion be- 
wilders one. As we ponder it, the imagination 
springs out upon such a flight that it makes us 
dizzy. Why, provoke man with a sufficient ex- 
tremity, and what can he not ask? Let him be 
lowered into the depth of some necessity, and what 
will he not crave ? Let him find himself on the 
brink of some awful emergency, let him feel him- 
self threatened by some dreadful peril, and what 
is there in all the provisions of safety that he will 
not clamor for ? Why, it would seem that the cry 
that issues from the lips of such extremity might 
tax any imaginable ability. And yet it is written 
that God is able to do exceeding more abundantly 
than you can ask or think. Ask or think ! Won- 
der upon wonder ! Where will this accumulating 
of language stop ? Try to compass this assertion. 
I confess my inability. It was just here, when 
writing this very page, that I made the attempt. 
I paused. I said, " I will test myself. I will call 
up the forces of my mind. I will see what I am 
able to do in the way of thinking^ I did. I sent 
my mind north, I sent it south : I jumped it to 
the east, I flashed it to the west ; I shot it up into 
heaven, I stood in hell; I thought of wealth, I 



THE DIVINE MEASURE OF GIVING. 99 

thought of fame; I compassed the whole realm 
of desirable things ; — I found I had the power to 
think anything y to desire everything. There seemed 
no end to my capacity of desiring and wishing. I 
found no limit save in my finiteness of conception. 
Ah, that is it, friend ; God's ability is above our 
conception. We think according to the measure 
of our capacity ; He does according to the measure 
of his capacity. It is the finite want over against 
the infinite fulness that this text presents to us ; 
man's craving for blessing over against God's crav- 
ing to bless ; the babe's desire for simple nourish- 
ment over against the large-hearted, large-minded 
mother's dreams and hopes and aspirations for her 
boy when he shall have become a man. 

Eemember, friends, I am not telling you what 
my views of God are, but what the Bible views 
are. I am not telling you of Him ; through this 
passage He is telling you of Himself, — His great, 
glorious Self. He says to you, one and all, "My 
children, you do not understand me ; you do not 
understand your own Father. Come up and meas- 
ure me. Bring up your power of asking and of 
thinking, and measure me by it, and see how much 
greater I am in my goodness and giving than you 
are able to ask or think." Moreover, it is as if 
He should say, " Do not come in your lower 
moods, your dull moods, your ordinary, unaspiring 
moods. Come in your best moods, — when you 



100 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

are spiritually quickened, when your longings 
are strong in you, when your hopes are high and 
your aspirations all sublime. Come then, and 
come so, and you shall see how much above the 
possibility of measurement, even by your best 
moods, I am in my willingness and ability to 
give." 

Ah, friends, this is the wonderful thing concern- 
ing God, — ^ you cannot understand Him ; not be- 
cause He veils Himself, but because He is so vast 
and bright. The soul finds the same difficulty in 
understanding Him as the eye finds in its attempts 
to study the sun. Power and excellency are so 
concentrated in Him, — His goodness is so fervid. 
His glory so effulgent. His love so intense. His 
wisdom so bright and penetrative, — that they 
overpower the soul in its attempts to analyze Him. 
Like the sun. He hides Himself in His own bright- 
ness. The glory which makes Him to be seen of 
all conceals Him from all. It is His life we cannot 
understand ; and yet, as John says, this life is the 
light of men. 

I remark, secondly, that this is God's habit or 
disposition, not an occasional impulse. The differ- 
ence between an impulse and a habit is this : an 
impulse is transient, a habit is continuous. An 
impulse must have an inciting cause. It is 
a result suddenly produced by some operating 
cause. But a habit is not a result. It is a cause 



THE DIVINE MEASURE OF GIVING. 101 

itself. It is not a production, but a producer; 
not an effect, but the promoter of effects. Under- 
neath all acts, lower than every impulse, you find, 
and always will find, a disposition. This disposi- 
tion gives the spirit its personality, and grades it 
morally. Disposition characterizes being. If the 
disposition is bad, the being is bad ; if the dispo- 
position is good, the being is good. It is the char- 
acter of the disposition which makes the difference 
between a devil and an angel. 

Well, this largeness of giving on the part of God 
is habitual with Him. It springs from His dispo- 
sition; nay, it is His disposition. It is not the 
result of any influence brought to bear upon Him ; 
it is not a mood which comes occasionally to Him : 
it is His own natural, eternal mood; it is the 
only way He ever felt ; it is His disposition ; it 
is God, — for, as the Apostle says, " God is love." 

This should be borne in mind by you who pray, 
and when you pray. When you kneel, remember 
God's mood, call up in remembrance His dispo- 
sition, do not forget what He has told you of 
Himself in this passage, think of Him as feeling 
from all eternity just the same. 

This view of God is essential to piety, especially 
for two reasons : first, it accounts for many a Di- 
vine transaction otherwise unaccountable. It is 
the only explanation of the incarnation of Christ, 
and the plan for man's redemption. Men say Cal- 



102 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

vary has taught us how God feels. So it has. It 
has taught us more. It has taught us how God felt. 
The effulgence of the Cross shines backward as 
well as forward. It is an orb radiant on all sides, 
and at every point. It lights up time, but it 
lights up eternity also. Standing on the crest of 
Calvary, I look backward as well as forward. I 
see what preceded as well as what followed the 
death of Christ. I get some such view, some such 
hint of things, as John had when he wrote, " In 
the beginning was the Word." Yes, away back in 
time, away back beyond time, in that far-stretch- 
ing, limitless eternity, I see God, and He is in no 
respect different from what he seems to the eye 
of truthful piety to-day. He has not changed the 
tithe of a hair. Wherever I see Him, I see Him 
with the same disposition; the loving placidness 
of His mood, like a level sea without a ripple, 
without an island, without a shore, stretclies back- 
ward and backward, on and on, until its even sur- 
face is lost to my wearied imagination. 

From such a God Christ might come. From 
such tranquil depths of benevolent being the wish 
and ability to lift poor drowning Peters might 
rise. From such an eternal disposition of loving, 
without ebb and without flood, because the source 
of it was changeless and the measure of it perfect, 
the Only Begotten might indeed be born. But 
from anything less than this no one can conceive 



THE DIVINE MEASURE OF GIVING. 103 

that the great plan of human redemption in Christ 
might originate. 

Secondly, it is this view of God, also, that makes 
oViV faith large. I emphasize the word large. Large 
faith, — where will you find it ? Small faiths are 
plenty enough. Faith that trembles, faith that 
doubts, faith that shrinks, faith that cannot believe 
itself, — this you will find everywhere ; you will 
find it in your own breast I find it everywhere ; I 
hear it preached in sermons, I hear it uttered in 
prayers, I hear it sung in our churches, I find it in 
the young convert, I find it also in the fears of the 
dying saint. Why, the struggle of the Holy Ghost 
to-day is to make you who are children of God, 
heirs of heaven, and joint heirs with Christ, be- 
lieve in your own salvation ! What a state of 
things ! You remember how the same peculiarity 
in the early disciples grieved Christ. 0, how it 
pained him ! What a low estimate of God's love 
and power it revealed ! How he fought against it ! 
How he ransacked the language for forms of state- 
ment, for illustrations, to drive it away and crush 
it out. At one time he would say, " Ask, and you 
shall receive " ; at another, '' Come unto me." Again 
he would assure them that ' God was more willing 
than earthly parents.' 

And near the close of his stay with them, how 
touchingly, how pathetically, he would tell them, 
" In my Father's house are many mansions." 



104 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

What we need, friends, is more faith to take God 
at His word ; to give common credence to the 
utterance of supreme truth ; to feel that neither 
our asking nor our thinking can ever equal the 
measure of God's giving. 

Again, this view of God is closely connected 
with prayer. Half the prayers we make are argu- 
ments. Men go up to God with a statement of 
their miserable condition, and then go to pleading 
and arguing before Him for a release. The idea 
is pacification, — to bring the Divine mind around 
to a benevolent posture toward the supplicant ; to 
present one's self in such a position as to insure 
commiseration on the part of God. Now, God is 
not won over to a favorable mood and a merciful 
temper by our supplications. Our pleading does 
not make His heart tender toward us ; His heart is 
always tender toward us. Prayer is not a cry of 
distress to a Christian ; its language is not a scream 
of fear : it is lark-like ; it mounts to heaven with 
a song in its mouth. Its home on the earth is 
amid fragrance. It has dwelt amid the clover- 
heads of promise. It has nested all its life amid 
odors and sweet growths. God has given it so 
much on the earth for which to be thankful, made 
the ordinary things of life so full of blessing and 
happiness, that whenever for a single moment 
God's Spirit gives it a winged power to mount up- 
ward, it thinks of nothing so quickly as its grati- 



THE DIVINE MEASURE OF GIVING. 105 

tude. When one truly understands God, he has 
delight in prayer. He is so good, it is a joy to be 
near Him. Whenever the human mind feels the 
touch of His contact with it, it must be happy. 
There is a restful quality in God that He imparts 
to those who come nigh Him, provided that they 
yield themselves trustfully to Him. The sobbing 
and tremblings of the soul are all gone when He 
has gathered it lovingly down into His bosom. 

the bosom of God, what love there is in 
it ! what mercies, what sympathies, what tender- 
ness, what yearnings to bestow itself upon the 
A^a^etched and the undeserving ! what holy ache 
and longing for children, and a crying out and 
searching for those not of its own likeness, to 
adopt unto itself ! This is God. This is the 
blessed Being we are to worship and love. 

You see, friends, God is fulness. There is and 
can be no scantness and meagreness about the 
Deity. He is large Himself, and does everything 
in a large way. He cannot exhaust any power or 
tire any faculty. There is nothing too ponderous 
and nothing too delicate for Him to do. He can 
make a world or a flower, a man or an insect, w^ith 
equal facility. Look at the earth : what a profu- 
sion of objects, w^hat a variety of forms, what 
multiplication of shapes, no two alike ; what myr- 
iads of creatures, separate and diverse ! Count 
the leaves on a single tree : multiply that into a 

5* 



106 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

grove, and a grove into a landscape. Take a square 
yard of sod, and number the spires of grass ; en- 
large the square yard to an acre, the acre into a 
township, and that into the whole earth. Take 
the microscope and view the insect world, and see 
how the earth teems with sw^arming life. Every 
leaf has its inhabitant, every spire of grass its ten- 
ant ; and this is true in respect to all the Divine 
doings. God is too abundant with beams, too in- 
tense and fervid, to go forth in single rays. He 
rolls Himself out into His universe in waves of 
light, in oceans of effulgence. He throws out ex- 
istence as a flower does perfume. Life is only the 
odor of His nature. For Him to exist is to create. 
I do not conceive of God as in action when He 
creates. He creates in His repose. He creates at 
rest. It is no task for Him to give birth to things. 
He does not labor in administration. It is no 
more toil for Him to beget than it is for a foun- 
tain, fed by perennial and inexhaustible springs, to 
overflow its mossy rim. Why, within, deep down 
in His eternal capacity, are such sources of life that 
the creative and creating overflow is continually 
pressing upward toward the surface of occasion 
and opportunity. 

This is the source and reason of all these w^orlds 
that hang suspended around us in the blue ether. 
This is the parent of all this swarm of feathery 
life that hide in thickets or whiten the far-off 



THE DIVINE MEASURE OF GIVING. 107 

islands of the sea with their dense array of snowy- 
plumes. This is the origin of these myriads of 
insects, these little earth-toilers, beneath our feet ; 
so thick that they make the very sod of our fields 
animate. These millions innumerable, these ranks 
and orders of atomic existence, which science can 
neither compute nor classify, — whence came they, 
or how came they to be born? They have all 
been breathed out of God ; they have come from 
the vapor of His nostrils ; they have been born of 
a power that would be unconscious of the results 
of its own working, so vast is it, Avere it not as 
infinite in its goodness and intelligence as it is in 
its energy. They are God's; all of them the 
children of a Power that "is able to do exceed- 
ing abundantly above all that we ask or think." 

These are the things, the effects, the results, 
which indicate the Divine nature. Beware of hav- 
ing a meagre, a little, a minute God. In order to 
have anything else, make your mind large by large 
thoughts of Him. Make your mind telescopic, not 
microscopic; have the field of vision wide, the 
object-glass large. Many people minimize God. 
They think of Him in such a way as to reduce 
Him to the smallest possible form and shape in 
which Deity can live. 

This text was intended to prevent such an error 
of judgment. It drew an outline of God in His 
beneficence, in His willingness to give good things 



108 MUSIC-HALL SEKMONS. 

to men. And when we search for this God in out- 
line, in order to measure His stature, lo ! we can- 
not find the white marks that represent His stature 
and proportions ; for they are outside, not alone of 
what we ordinarily imagine God to be, but out- 
side of what we can either ask or think. Now, 
my people, w^hen we come to search for the source 
of this beneficence on the part of God, what do 
we find it to be ? I answer. Love, — " love divine, 
aU love excelling," as the poet sings. When John 
turned his inspired vision toward the Deity ; when, 
spiritually assisted in apprehension, he looked at 
God, — he saw what? Why, something like this. He 
saw power, — power columnar and colossal ; power 
which had for its pedestal the universal frame of 
things, — nothing less wide being adequate to supply 
it with a base,— and so high in its projection up- 
ward that the remoter stars seemed only the wor- 
shippers standing with veiled and sobered faces 
around the footstool. He looked again, and saw 
wisdom directing this power, — directing it easily ; 
putting upon its enginery of forces every needed 
check ; pervading it with intelligence, so that it 
became a law unto itself, and made its every evolu- 
tion proper, and its every action harmonious with 
all that was within and without itself. He looked 
for the third time, and saw truth dwelling within 
this almightiness, as your soul dwells within your 
body; crystallizing its otherwise cloudy and opaque 



THE DIVINE MEASURE OF GIVING, 109 

substance into absolute purity and clearness, so 
that in the presence of this Divine essence and 
being the ^^ very heavens are unclean." But when 
he came to look for the fourth time, what did he 
behold ? Hushed be the voice that tells it ! Above 
power, higher than wisdom, w^hich makes it intelli- 
gent, — supplying to the one its crown, and its 
moral quality to the other; giving to otherwise 
unattractive truth its glow and warmth ; poured 
over all; constituting all, as the sun does our 
earthly days, — he saw love ; and so much was it 
above all other elements and attributes of Divinity, 
that it alone was able to characterize Divinity, it 
alone could furnish him with a descriptive name 
for God ; and so, summing all up, he exclaimed, 
''God is lover 

Now, I dare say that there are many in this con- 
gregation who have never come to God. I do not 
use the phrase, "come to God," grossly and objec- 
tively, as when we speak of one man coming to 
another man : I use it subjectively, I use it spirit- 
ually. I mean that you have never come to God 
in your mind, your thoughts, your impulses, your 
hopes ; you have never put your soul in com- 
munion with Him, never made Him your anchor in 
storms of trouble, your shield in peril, your staff in 
weakness, your hope in despair. You have seen 
times when you wished you had Him thus con- 
nected with you ; when you envied those who had. 



110 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

when you inwardly decided that you would one 
day be thus connected with Him yourself; but 
you held back, — something held you back. Per- 
haps it was lack of w^hat you supposed to be 
needed knowledge. Friend, you need no knowl- 
edge in order to go to God. The babe is not 
learned, and yet it goes to the mother's breast for 
nourishment. It has no knowledge but the knowl- 
edge of a felt want. It cannot express even that, 
save by its action. Well, so I say to you, you 
need no knowledge in order to go to God, but a 
felt want of Him. Go to Him as a babe goes to 
the mother's breast for nourishment. You need 
not speak a word ; you may not be old enough to 
speak spiritually yet. Let your action speak for 
you. God understands that language, friend. Do 
you remember the poor publican's prayer ? Yes. 
Well, what was it ? " God be merciful to me, a sin- 
ner." No, that was not the poor publican's prayer. 
It was his smiting on his breast which was his 
prayer. The inward sense of guilt, of shame, of re- 
morse ; the inward want and craving of his soul 
for pardon, for peace, for communion with a merci- 
ful God, — that was the publican's prayer. It was 
the movement of his soul, and not of his lips, that 
God saw and recognized. And who doubts but 
that the Deity stooped from His high throne in the 
heavens, lifted the soul of the poor publican into 
His bosom, and satisfied its craving for mercy 



THE DIVINE MEASURE OF GIVING. Ill 

and help with an eternal supply of His comforting 
grace ? 

Or it may be you do not go to God because of 
fear. Your guilt makes you timid, your ill-desert 
makes you shrink. AVell, I admit this is natural 
to an unrenewed mind, a mind that cannot un- 
derstand God. that the Holy Spirit may come 
down into your mind, and renew it in knowledge 
of spiritual things, that you may understand God ; 
for then you would see that God is to you in the 
midst of your guilt what the solid shore is to a 
shipwrecked man ! Does that poor sailor fe^ar the 
sliore ? Fear the shore ! Why, it is his only liope. 
If he can only touch that, he is safe. Well, so it 
is between you who are in the midst of many fears 
because of your sins and God. God is the shore. 
Eeach Him, and you are safe. The waves of His 
mercy are rolling you in toward Him to-day. You 
can feel them lift you. What strength there is 
underneath you ! How they heave your soul up 
and roll it on out of peril, out of fear, toward the 
white line of waiting angels ! Do not resist, friend. 
Let the Almighty, who is doing for you more than 
you dare ask or think, lift you up out of the waves 
of death, and cause you to stand, a rescued soul, 
on the shore of Everlasting Life. 



112 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



SEEMON YIL 



GOOD HEALTH, — ITS RELIGIOUS EELATIOK 

*' Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomacL's 
sake and thine often infirmities." — 1 Tim. v. 23. 



PAUL, in this passage, has turned physician. 
Timothy — a man peculiarly dear to him, a 
man he loved, a man most useful in the work of the 
ministry — is threatened with sickness. He may 
have worked too hard, he may have been careless 
in his diet, he may have inherited a weakly organ- 
ization from his parents, — whatever the cause, he 
was getting in a bad way physically. He was in 
danger of breaking down, and it was very impor- 
tant to Paul, and very important to the cause of 
Christ, that he should not break down. Health 
was everything then, as it is now, to a man in the 
ministry. A sick minister, like a sick soldier, is 
so much clear loss to the army, — one man less, 
when the ranks must be kept full. Paul heard 
how things stood with Timothy. He felt anxious 
about him. He was very dear to him personally. 
He calls him ''his son in the gospel." He was a 
valuable helper. He was filling a place that no 
one could fill as well as himself. His retirement 
would be a great loss, his death a public calamity. 



GOOD HEALTH, — ITS EELIGIOUS RELATIOX. 113 

Paul felt all this, — felt it in both his judgment and 
his affections, — and his anxiety finds expression 
in the words of the text. It is the only prescrip- 
tion, of which we have any knowledge, backed up 
by apostolic authority. The great thought sug- 
gested by this passage is the value of good health. 

This is the time of year in which every thought- 
ful person is reorganizing himself; laying down 
rules for the better government of his life, making 
resolutions, and forming his plans for the coming- 
year. And I preach this sermon to you to-day in 
order that, in the multitude of your reflections, you 
may not overlook the one essential thought upon 
which, more than upon anything else, the consum- 
mation of your wishes and the successful issue of 
your plans depend, namely, good health. 

The trouble which meets a clergyman at the 
very outset of such a discourse is, that an au- 
dience is apt to overlook its religious character. 
One of the worst forms of infidelity, as it exists 
in our times, is that which denies the divine ori- 
gin and use of the body. Any application of the 
Gospels to mental states is considered by the most 
obtuse as eminently fit and proper; but when you 
proceed to make an application of the same truth 
to bodily states, the reception is altogether differ- 
ent. The one discourse is received wdth favor, 
as full of spirituality ; the other with very much 
the same feeling as you might give to a secular 



114 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

treatise on a secular theme. Do not say that this 
is not so, for I know that it is so. And I dare to 
say that a great many of you who are among the 
most anxious for spiritual results have already said 
in your own heart, "I wish he had taken some 
other topic to-day, — repentance, or depravity, or 
regeneration, or something with a little closer spir- 
itual application." Well, friends, I do not doubt 
that you are honest in your aspiration, any more 
than I do that you are all wrong in it. And I 
hope to show you, before I close, that this matter 
of health and the duty of conserving it has as close 
application spiritually as any other in the w^hole 
Bible. A matter which the Holy Ghost did not 
deem insignificant when it had reference to only one 
person cannot be unworthy of our prayerful atten- 
tion when it has direct application to a thousand, 
scores of whom are as important to the cause of 
the gospel to-day as Timothy was in his time. 

And, first, I wdsh to present to you a few con- 
siderations touching the rank and dignity the 
body holds and has in the spiritual economy. 

I know that the Bible speaks of the "vile 
body"; and when you regard it as the home of sin, 
as the avenue along which temptation marches to 
besiege the soul, as subject to quick mortality, as 
no more in duration beside the soul than a falling 
star is beside the great luminary which abides as 
the source of permanent illumination to the sky, — 



GOOD HEALTH, — ITS EELIGIOUS RELATION. 115 

when you regard it in this light, I say, it is vile. 
Even the flesh can be so debauched as to become 
repulsive to the senses. Viewed merely as an 
animal, man under the influence of sin becomes 
unseemly. But when the body is considered as 
the handiwork of God, as expressly designed and 
put together as a habitation for the soul, as its 
companion during all its earthly existence ; when 
you look upon it as an instrument to minister to 
the joy and growth of the mind, as the agent that 
performs duties and produces effects whose influ- 
ence eternity alone can measure, — when you con- 
sider the body in this light, I say, it is not vile, 
but noble ; not debased, but exalted. The first 
condition of all correct thinking upon this subject is 
a frank, open, and grateful recognition of God as 
the creator and preserver of your body. And this 
should be done, not in a general sort of a way, but 
with the same precision and fulness with which 
you conceive of God as the source of your intel- 
lectual powers. The mind is no more the child 
of God than is the body. Memory and conscience 
are no more a Divine gift than are the muscles. 
It is as wicked to sin against the stomach as it 
is to sin against the judgment. It is as fully 
a matter of duty to keep the blood pure as 
it is the imagination. In brief, you have no 
right before your Maker to rule your body out 
of that circle within whose circumference moral 



116 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

obligation is included, any more than you have to 
rule your soul out of the same circle. And when 
any exhortation comes to you out of the Scripture 
touching the government and conservation of your 
bodily powers and faculties, you should not pass it 
by as you would a secular direction, you should not 
regard it as something to be rejected or accepted 
as suits your taste, your appetites, or your con- 
venience, but you should regard it as imperative, 
as coming from an inspired source, and as bind- 
ing upon you as any other direction or command 
in the Scripture. For every injunction of God is 
absolute, and allows to the party addressed no 
option. Now, I hope you all admit this ; for it is 
as true as any thought I have ever suggested to 
you. Let us now consider the subject of health 
viewed in several of its many connections. 

In the first place, of all natural blessings it is 
the most personal. It comes closer home to the 
consciousness. It requires no education to under- 
stand it. ,It interprets itself. The beggar and the 
king, the young and the old, give it the same spon- 
taneous recognition. God's gifts are not always 
thus simple. They come at times in disguise, at 
times in a germinal state. Culture and years can 
alone fitly interpret them. But health comes to 
us like a piece of bread from a mother's hand. 
It is God's direct communication with us ; and the 
mouth that is fed by the gift can bless the Giver. 



GOOD HEALTH, — ITS RELIGIOUS RELATION. 117 

N"or is health less intimately connected with 
our happiness. It is not merely one of many 
elements ; it is the very foundation of happiness, 
the sole soil in which naturally it can sprout. 
I pray you all to bear in mind — that you may 
apprehend the true connection of health with 
God's design — that the happy state is that one 
in which God desires and designed all his creatures 
should be. A cross man is an ungodly man; 
that is, he is practically in opposition to God's 
will. Surliness is one form of impiety. Now, a 
sick man, if he is not sick enough to be fright- 
ened, is very apt to be a cross man. When a man's 
nerves are on fire with neuralgia, his muscles 
wrung and twisted with rheumatism, and his 
stomach possessed with the devil of dyspepsia, 
he is as one put into the very strait-jacket of 
temptation. If he can keep his tranquillity, his 
suavity, his gentleness, he ought to be canonized. 
Evil has him at an immense disadvantage. He 
fights against the heaviest kind of odds. But it 
is not difficult to be happy in health. When the 
muscles act so easily that you do not feel them 
move, when the nerves thrill with pleasure at 
the transmission of thought, when the stomach 
does its work so well that you know not when 
it toils or rests, when the blood is pure as old 
wine, and the pulses even and regular in their 
beat as a Waltham watch, then it is not difficult 



118 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

to be good, then happiness is natural. I have no 
doubt that at least one half of the misery and 
unhappiness in the world comes from ill-health. 
One of the first things I noted in Nature was, 
that all her children are happy. I have watched 
all manner of bird and beast known to our N'orth- 
ern clime, — watched them unseen, — and whether 
they played upon the sands, sported in the water, 
or sailed upon the wind, in every motion, in every 
turn of wing and limb, they revealed their hap- 
piness. Health leads them to such happiness 
as they are permitted by their capacity to feel. 
From nature I have turned to man, from the wil- 
derness I have come to the city ; and what have I 
seen ? What confinement, what restlessness, what 
discontent, what loathings, what weariness and an- 
guish, what suspension of natural powers, what 
antagonism betwixt those that were still operant ! 
And I have said to myself, " Disease, thou art 
a knife whose edge is at the throat of happiness, 
whose point is in the very vitals of man's desire ! " 
I ask you to observe, in order to better real- 
ize the goodness of God and your duty, that He 
not only gave to man a body which, in the per- 
fection of the whole or the harmonious union 
of all the parts, suggests absence of pain and 
presence of pleasure, but He has also surrounded 
us with much that fulfils its object best when it 
most ministers to our happiness. More than once, 



GOOD HEALTH, — ITS RELIGIOUS RELATION. 119 

when about to lie down to sleep, have I gazed out 
upon the moonlit waters • tinged with soft silver 
from shore to shore, listened to the low plash of 
waves at my feet, gazed at the dark outline of the 
woods suggestive of repose, and said, as I closed 
my eyes, " Never can the eaHh seem so lovely to 
me again as I have seen it to-night " ; but when I 
woke, and my opening eyes beheld the rising day, 
— the clouds tinged with gold, softened here and 
there into amber ; the fog no longer cold and 
gray, but rolling its waves of crimson across the 
lake; heard the drip of the resinous gums, the 
same musical dash of waves on the shore, and 
caught the sweet scent of the lilies borne on the 
moist breeze from the far-off bay, — I have said, 
" Nature, thou dost indeed change, but it is from 
glory unto glory, and thy loveliness increaseth with 
the number of thy days." 

But what is Nature in all her loveliness to the 
eye that is glazed with fever ? What are her sights 
and sounds to one shut up within the sick-cham- 
ber ? What is the lusciousness of all the fruits, 
whether of tropic or temperate clime, when the 
appetite is gone ? What can all the surroundings 
suggest to the mind that is frenzied and delirious ? 
See, then, how, as in perfect music, there is no 
room for a single discordant note. So in God's 
design in nature and man, whose perfect ex- 
pression is sweeter and more sublime than any 



120 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

minstrelsy, there is no room for illness, no pro- 
vision for disease. 

But observe, further, health is no more im- 
portant, no more essential, touching our enjoyment 
than it is in respect to our usefulness. 

A person's usefulness is that result reached by 
the exercise of all his faculties. Weaken the 
faculties, and you to the same extent diminish his 
usefulness. This is a truism, and needs no expan- 
sion ; you accept it at the utterance. Still, one or 
two reflections may not be amiss. 

The noblest ambition any breast can cherish is 
that of usefulness. In the scale of Divine estima- 
tion it lifts one to the seat of royalty. Christ 
made it the test of one's fitness to be exalted. 
He who would be the greatest must become the 
servant of all. The extent to which a capable 
person can serve mankind is almost incalculable. 
Every hour is an occasion, every moment an op- 
portunity. He can scarcely take a step and not 
meet some duty. Take a mother of several chil- 
dren when of tender years ; I mean a mother 
that is a mother, — a mother who does not farm 
out her little ones on Irish help, but is a nurse 
and companion to them herself, — take such a 
mother, I say, and when is she ever done with her 
sweet, influential work? When does the oppor- 
tunity for usefulness cease ? When is her pres- 
ence, her eye, her voice, not needed ? Moreover, 



GOOD HEALTH, —-ITS RELIGIOUS RELATION. 121 

if she be a wise and good woman, who can make 
good her absence to those children ? What voice, 
w^hat touch, whose face, is like hers ? You know 
that there is none. No other can take the place, 
discharge the duties, that God has appointed for a 
mother. The law that regulates the emission and 
recession of influence is absolute ; it partakes of 
the nature of a decree. But observe how ill- 
health thwarts all the Divine intention touching 
maternal influence. Let the mother of a house- 
hold be taken sick, and what a change comes over 
the family ! what an interruption of wise cus- 
toms, what irregularities, what letting down of 
rules, what unruly habits, what neglect, what con- 
fusion, follow ! The family affairs now move on 
like a ship that is not steered. The hand has de- 
serted the helm, and, undirected by the authority 
of one controlling will, the poor vessel veers, 
tacks, sways, and sails in irregular and fruitless 
circles. Then it is that you perceive how large is 
the sphere that a mother fills, how potent and 
salutary is her influence, how necessary is her 
bodily presence. Now, you cannot, any of you, 
say that this illustration is exaggerated. And in 
the light of it, which reveals everything in its 
due proportion, I ask you to note and tell me, if 
there is any natural blessing greater, any duty more 
imperative, than that of health. Now, consider 
the multitude of mothers that are sickly, — women 

6 



122 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

dragging themselves around with only half the 
vital force and strength they absolutely need in 
order to discharge the duties' of their position, — 
consider that lack of health means loss of influ- 
ence, and of influence, too, worth more than gold 
to us all, and declare if it is not time for us to 
confess that good health has a spiritual connection 
that we must not any longer ignore. I hope to 
live to see the day when any indiscretion, any 
carelessness, touching the preservation of health 
shall be publicly and privately regarded as sin. 

I will not, I dare not, trust myself to speak of 
that other subject lying close to this, that darker 
fringe on the borders of this piece of sackcloth. 
A mist of doubt, of fear, of shivering apprehen- 
sion rises before me as I write, — a mist peo- 
pled with infantile faces, faces half formed, faces 
that belong to what must be nameless, for we 
know not what yet to call them, — faces of the 
unborn; a horrid mist, I say, peopled with in- 
firmities, with diseases, with complaints that float 
in shadow now, yet destined to be clothed in 
flesh and blood, whose voice shall serve only to 
prolong the moan and suffering of the ages ; a 
mist full of cries and agonies, in which the weak- 
ness and inability of the present are repeated in 
the person of weakly offspring. Shall God never 
deliver the world from these ? Must the ages 
forever go groaning along, piling up in horrible 



GOOD HEALTH, — ITS RELIGIOUS RELATION. 123 

repetition that which should never be repeated? 
Is the present forever to curse the future with its 
fatal gift of sickness ? Have we any right before 
God or man to burden the shoulders of five gen- 
erations with the slow-operating penalty of our 
carelessness and indiscretion ? Have we no ceme- 
teries ? What nobler use is there known to rea- 
soning, to thoughtful beings than to make their 
peaceful slopes and quiet recesses the burial- 
places of our weaknesses forever. I honor the 
man and woman who, knowing that in them are 
diseases and weaknesses that should never be 
repeated, can fold their infirmities about them, as 
the ancient Eomans wrapped themselves in their 
mantles when about to die, and say to their taints 
of blood and passions. Come, ye evil ministries 
that thwart God's good design in birth, — come, lie 
down with us, and let the curse He visited through 
us on our rash parents be buried forever in our 
graves. 

I speak for those who sleep in cradles to-day, 
and for that multitude unknown as yet to life, — 
the children of the future. I speak for those who 
know not and will never know who pleaded for 
them, but whose lives will take tone and charac- 
ter from decisions made here to-day. Never with 
greater sincerity have I ever spoken to you upon 
any subject than I am now speaking to you upon 
this. Never was I impelled by a more urgent 



124 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

conviction of duty. If no force can be found in 
the Scripture to counteract the physical degen- 
eracy of the age, then, for one, I say, better for the 
race were it remanded back into primeval barba- 
rism. . If men and women can go on committing 
slow suicide, as hundreds are now doing; if a 
man, for the sake of adding one or two thousand 
to his income, can deliberately run the risk of 
fever, insanity, or death ; if a woman, by dress 
and diet and manner of life, can outrage every 
rule and principle of health ; — - if these things can 
be done until they become the fashion and the 
habit, and no one else will join me in saying it, 
then I will stand alone, and at every opportunity 
characterize it by its right name ; and it shall be 
called before men, as it is known to be in the 
judgment of high Heaven, a dark, deep, and 
damning sin, — a sin which God does not wink at, 
as He did formerly, when the rules and conditions 
of health were not so well ascertained as now, 
but which He punishes, as your pains and aches 
and infirmities testify. What right have you, sir, 
to take that pure blood in your veins, which God 
designed to be a source of strength and happiness 
to you, and make it thick with impurities, and a 
source of weakness and corruption ? What right 
have you to overtax those muscles ; to make those 
nerves like so many red-hot wires under the skin ; 
to destroy the exquisite mechanism of the stom- 



GOOD HEALTH, — ITS RELIGIOUS RELATION. 125 

ach, whose structure no one can understand and 
not be amazed ; to take that brain, that reflection 
of God, where judgment and reason, imagination 
and all the aS'ections, live, and by overwork re- 
duce it to its minimum of power, inflame it with 
fevers, or reduce it to the flaccid state of inanition ? 
Is this temple of the Holy Ghost, is this immor- 
tal spirit ministering at its altar, to be treated in 
this way, and God not affix blame somewhere ? 
And if somewhere, where, I pray, save upon the 
man or woman or youth that does it ? I tell you, 
friend, if you are not careful, if you do not repent 
and change your course, your body shall rise in 
judgment to condemn you. The poor, neglected, 
and abused child of God shall come to your side, 
and before its Father's face and yours rehearse the 
catalogue of its wrongs. It shall tell how it was 
treated, and angels, who regarded it as one of the 
most beautiful and complete of all God's creations, 
shall be amazed. It shall tell how it was cramped 
and pinched and distorted ; how it was overtaxed 
and worked like a slave ; how it was burnt with 
fevers that might have been avoided, and flung 
into great caldrons of rheumatic fire; how the 
wicked imagination sapped its powers, and lust 
brutalized its sensibilities ; how life was made to 
be one long agony, and caused the very corruption 
of the grave to be anticipated : and many a man 
who has been morally upright, who has been 



126 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

neither a thief nor a murderer, shall then discover 
that the great sin of his life was his neglect and 
abuse of his body. What he thought was, at the 
worst, only an injury to himself, he shall then see 
was a continued affront put upon God. 

I have now discussed health in relation to our 
happiness and usefulness. Allow me now, before 
I close, to speak of the relation which it sustains 
to our spiritual life and development. 

In all our religious undertakings the body is the 
companion of the soul. We cannot read, or hear, 
or sing, or go to the house of God without it. 
Sickness cuts one off from a thousand privileges 
which are the very food of the soul ; sickness 
means prostration of energies, a lapse of influence, 
a sudden and complete stoppage of all those force- 
ful currents through which a man pours himself 
for the good of others. A disturbance in a few 
vocal organs here in my throat, resulting in a loss 
of voice, and I should be instantly excluded from 
that sphere of effort in which it has been God's 
will to place me, and in which, apparently, I can 
best serve Him. The margin which lies between 
usefulness and incapacity is in many instances 
frightfully narrow. The tension to which you 
must put the string of a violin in order to bring 
forth its highest and purest note is that next to 
breaking. The slightest possible turn, and the 
melody ends with the discordant snap. I have 



GOOD HEALTH, — ITS RELIGIOUS RELATION. 127 

already taxed your patience, and yet how much 
in connection with this subject remains unsaid, 
how many of its relations untouched. Possibly 
I may hereafter speak further upon it. But, be 
this as it may, I have, I trust, said enough to 
show you that the matter of health has religious 
relations ; that it bears directly on your duties and 
growth in Christ ; and that a graver responsibility 
than you have been accustomed to think, rests 
upon you all. For one, henceforth, even more 
than in the past, I shall hold my life as God's gift 
to me, as something too sacred to trifle with, too 
precious to barter for temporary gain or applause. 
Health shall be to me as the pivot upon which 
happiness, usefulness, and. all right views of God 
turn. So far as He grants unto me to order events, 
I hope to die in the fulness of years and the plen- 
itude of peace, born of the thought that I have 
slighted no gift, abused no trust, nor opposed in 
practice His divine wish and will. 



128 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



SEEMON VIII. 

REASONS WHY SO MANY MEN IN CHRISTIAN COM- 
MUNITIES REMAIN UNCONVERTED. 

** He that hath an ear, let him hear." — Rev. iii. 22. 

ONE of the wonders of to-day is the number 
of well-disposed, intelligent, warm-hearted 
men that are not professed Christians. With so 
many churches and preachers and teachers, with 
so many agents and agencies, it seems at the first 
thought unaccountable that so many men and 
women remain unconverted. The question that 
rises in the mind of every man as he thinks of 
this state of things is, Why is it ? How does 
it come about that it is so ? 

This question I shall attempt to answer. My 
theme is, " Why do not men come to God ? " 

As I pondered this question, seeking to find a 
true answer, the causes seemed to arrange them- 
selves in two classes : the one class I designate as 
the outside causes, and the other as the inside 
causes ; by "this I mean that the causes which keep 
these men from coming to God exist both outside 
themselves, — that is to say, in others, — and also in 
themselves ; and this is the division I have adopted. 

The first reason I shall mention why this large 



WHY SO MANY MEN REMAIN UNCONVERTED. 129 

class of men do not come to God, is because the 
subject is not clearly , forcibly, and judiciously pre- 
sented to them. 

Eeligion labors under this tremendous disad- 
vantage before a popular audience, that its claims 
are not well argued. We have in our pulpits 
comparatively few men who state a thing clearly. 
They have not trained themselves to do it. They 
have persuaded themselves that their usefulness 
lies in another direction. Webster would make a 
statement so that when the statement was made 
the question was half argued. Lincoln would put a 
proposition so clearly that it argued itself. Lyman 
Beecher would announce divine principles in such 
a way that no one could doubt them. Eeligion 
never depended on preaching so much as to-day, 
nor was it ever more poorly served. Eeligion needs 
in every generation a restatement. Its claims, in 
order to be admitted, must be heard by the people, 
and heard, too, set forth in such clearness and 
force that no one can deny them. The tongues of 
fire which came down and sat upon the early dis- 
ciples were symbolic of that greatest of all agen- 
cies to forward the gospel cause. The Church 
needs and lacks to-day tongues of power. The 
terms of salvation need to be proclaimed so that 
all must and shall hear. Jesus needs to-day men 
strong in great utterance, mighty in speech. 

But even when you find a preacher who preaches 

6* I 



130 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

clearly and forcibly, lie often does not preach judi- 
ciously. He is not calm, sagacious, well balanced. 
He mars what he says well by saying many unne- 
cessary things. He weakens what he insists upon 
by insisting upon too much. Essentials and non- 
essentials have equal prominence in his discourse. 
His extravagances cause him to be less esteemed 
than he should be. He fails to exert upon men 
that peculiar influence which is easily exerted by 
one who has won from them the confession that he 
is a man of good judgment. I suspect, friends, 
that much of the impotence of preaching arises from 
one of these three causes : the claims of God upon 
the soul are not stated dearly, forcibly ^ oy judiciously. 
In other words, the claims of religion are weak, be- 
cause weakly stated. The unconverted need to be 
impressed, and are not, because the pulpits are 
weak in those elements of strength from which, 
as streams from their sources, great mental and 
spiritual impressions come. 

The second cause I mention is the difference of 
views among religious teachers. 

'' When pilots disagree, the crew will desert," is 
an old adage ; and when ministers fall out one 
with another touching the meaning of the Bible^ 
they weaken its influence and their own upon the 
average public mind. But the worst result of 
such disagreement is, that it leads to disagreement 
and antagonism among their respective peoples, 



WHY SO MANY MEN REMAIN UNCONVERTED. 131 

begets unnecessary and useless discussions, and so 
serves to draw the minds of many interested per- 
sons from the vital point, which is their own sal- 
vation, and to direct them to other and useless 
themes. Our churches are filled with discussions 
that will never benefit any one. Sabbath-school 
teachers devote their time to the investigation of 
points of Old Testament history that have no more 
connection with the conversion of their scholars 
than the battle of Marathon has with the reforma- 
tion of drunkards. Doctrines are debated, princi- 
ples of interpretations decided, chronological dif- 
ficulties attacked, discussions started, of no use 
whatever in converting a soul. Precious time is 
thus wasted, energies misspent, and intellectual 
antagonisms begotten, which will be strong to 
divide the hearts of men when they have reached 
maturity. Over against this method of preaching 
and teaching I set another, the entire aim of which 
is to converge men's thoughts and bring their 
scattered convictions to one focus ; and that focus 
shall be the conviction of the soul of sin, and its 
immediate conversion to holiness. We waste our 
moral forces instead of economizing them. We 
weaken the claims of religion upon the soul, first, 
by weakly presenting them ; and, secondly, by 
distracting the inquirer's mind from the real point 
at issue between it and God. 

The third and last of these outside causes I shall 



132 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

mention is this : religion is advertised wrongly, 
both by the verbal descrij)tion given to it and the 
examples of those who profess it. 

I can only state these propositions, friends, for 
I have not the time to argue them at length. 
This I will say, touching the injury done to re- 
ligion by the faulty examples of those who pro- 
fess it. 

Now, every one desires to be happy. The con- 
dition of heaven is the ambition of earth. What 
the angels have men long to acquire. Eeligion as 
a source of happiness comes to men, therefore, 
with a great natural advantage in its favor; for 
men crave from instinct the very experience it is 
calculated to bestow. But how is it in point of 
fact ? Why, the fact is, it is not made to seem to 
the popular mind as the source of happiness. Men 
naturally look to its examples to apprehend its 
true character, and they are not made to appre- 
hend it in that way. On the other hand, the 
impression made upon them is often precisely the 
reverse. They are thus repelled from, instead of 
being attracted to it ; and religion must approach 
them ever after at a great disadvantage. 

Now, I wish to say this, as my testimony to all 
of you who are not as yet religious : religion does 
make a person happy. The moods and tempers 
it fosters are those of happiness. It lightens one's 
burdens, consoles him in sorrow, blesses him with 



WHY SO MANY IMEN REMAIN UNCONVERTED. 133 

a great hope, and fills him with peace. I suppose 
that I am ordinarily gifted with the several sources 
of strength. Perhaps I can endure as much, with- 
out sinking down, as most men ; but I am free to 
say that I have seen times when religion saved 
me from sinking. It did not create, but it assisted, 
the patience derived from nature. It supplied me 
with moods and feelings which are essential to 
soundness of judgment, and thereby kept me from 
disastrous errors. It gave to my feelings a tem- 
per which took the edge off of enmity and made 
the smiter powerless ; and, above all, upheld me 
with the hope of ultimate victory. It has made 
me stronger, happier, and better, and it gives me 
great pleasure to bear this testimony in its favor 
to-day. Indeed, young men, the practice of re- 
ligion never fails one. You may learn a trade, 
hoping thereby to gain wealth, and you may fail ; 
you may study law, hoping thereby to become 
famous, and you may never see the fame you 
desire ; you may aspire to the honors of the forum, 
and the applause of the populace may be with- 
held: but no one ever studied the principles of 
holiness and acted up to his knowledge, and failed 
of his reward. He who does business for God 
can never be bankrupt. All else may fail us, but 
the pleasures of Christian hope and the consolation 
of Christian faith can never be taken from us. 
The virtuous man can lose nothing, for his virtues 
are his reward. 



134 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

I have now passed in swift review several of 
what might be styled the outside causes why you 
who are not religious do not come to God, and I 
submit to you, as candid men, if I have not dealt 
fairly with you in my statement. I appeal to you 
to say whether I have not kept the facts of the 
case in view and stated things impartially. Now 
I wish to speak of the other side of the subject, 
I have spoken of the outside, I now wish to speak 
of the inside, causes that keep you from God. I 
have asked you to look at others ; I now ask you 
to look within yourselves. Shut your eyes, friend, 
for a moment ; look no longer at the faults of your 
neighbor ; look at your own soul, and see if within 
that cannot be found causes, fearfully potent, cal- 
culated to prevent you from coming to God. 

The first cause I mention is this : you have 
imbibed wrong views of God. 

These wronsf views of the Divine nature and 
government, being received and adopted, have led 
you to adopt wrong views touching your own 
nature and the proper government of your lives. 
If you understood God, you would understand 
what would be, in the very nature of things, de- 
manded of you. A weakly, effeminate conception 
of God leads to a weakly, effeminate morality on 
the part of the believer. An impotent government 
begets rebellious subjects. A fickle father will be 
overrun by unruly children. I protest, therefore, 



WHY SO MANY MEN KEMAIN UNCONVERTED. 135 

against any further increase of those weak and 
sentimental views of God, already too prevalent, 
as calculated to remove from the public mind some 
of the great parental causes of virtue, as calcu- 
lated to lull the consciences of men into a lethargy, 
equally dangerous to the person and the state. 

Now, these wrong notions of God you have im- 
bibed not alone from the faulty expression of others, 
but also because you have not been earnest and 
candid in your investigation of spiritual things. 
You have not conducted your inquiry like a stu- 
dent who wished only to ascertain the plain un- 
varnished truth, but rather as a debater w^ho 
studies a question for the purpose of being able to 
present one side of it successfully. To this end 
you have read only those books favorable to one 
side, heard only those speakers who think as you 
thought or wanted to think ; heard evidence pro 
and con, not as a judge, but as a partisan. In 
short, you have been thoroughly prejudiced from 
beginning to end. 

Now, I ask you to tell me, as one candid man 
tells another, face to face and honestly, could you 
have possibly selected a worse way to carry on 
your investigation, provided your desire is to arrive 
at the truth ? Do you think that Truth, immortal 
and divine, the very embodiment of sincerity and 
candor, will ever unfold her treasures to one who 
sets out to find her only in order to avoid her ? If 



136 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

your object was to become a religious partisan, I 
admire your cunning. The method was in har- 
mony with the ambition. But if you ever desire 
to know God, to understand His nature and ways, 
to master those principles of virtuous conduct by 
the practising of which you become like Him, then 
have you taken the very course, beyond all others, 
most likely to thwart you in your desire. Continue 
in the way you have begun, and you will, beyond 
peradventure, become a partisan, but you will 
never become a Christian. Only those souls who, 
forgetful of earthly considerations, walk with up- 
lifted faces and eyes fastened upon the stars, ever 
behold the light of truth, ever feel the warmth 
of the divine glow. 

The second cause existing within yourselves is 
this : even those efforts which you have made in 
all honesty of purpose have been under the direc- 
tion of a wrong impression of what is to be done. 

We will suppose that you honestly desired refor- 
mation, honestly desired higher moods and nobler 
impulses. We will suppose that you had come to a 
point — to which almost every man comes, at least, 
once in his life — standing at which you saw 
the evil of your lives, saw that inevitable disaster 
morally awaited you if you continued to go on as 
you had been going, and said to yourself, " This 
thing must stop. I am not living as I should live. 
I must make a change, or I am undone.'' 



WHY SO MANY MEN REMAIN UNCONVERTED. 137 

Now we will suppose, I say, friend, that you 
had come to such a point of conviction as that ; 
saw that something must be done, and made an 
honest effort to do it. Now I dare say you failed ; 
you fought nobly, but you did not win. How 
often have I had men tell me of such periods and 
experiences ! They would say, " Mr. Murray, if 
ever a man tried to become good I did at that 
time. I hated myself, and I tried to escape from 
myself ; but I could n't. I hated my way of think- 
ing and feeling ; I strove to escape from my im- 
pure imaginations, as angels might strive to escape 
from a cloud of pursuing devils ; I hated liquor 
and all the low, dirty indulgences to which it led, 
and God knows I strove to deliver myself : but I 
failed, and here I am, to-day, a moral bankrupt 
and a wreck." 

Well, friend, your failure is not mysterious. 
There is nothing unaccountable about it. If you 
had come to me then, and told me what you were 
about to attempt, and told me, in answer to my 
inquiry, what resources were at your command, I 
should have told you in an instant that your 
resources were insufficient. I should have said 
at once, " That is too little powder to drive a ball 
the distance you intend to shoot." You failed 
because you went to work the wrong way; you 
did not start right. You set out to shoot a fall 
before you got your boat straight with the current. 



138 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and the result was that the hissing waters caught 
the keel, and you went down to the brink side on, 
and you and your boat were sucked under like a 
chip. Your error was this : you said, '' I am tired 
of sour apples, I will henceforth raise nothing but 
sweet ones on my trees." And you might have 
done it — you know how — by grafting in a new 
variety into the old trees ; but instead of grafting 
in a new and stronger principle of sweet life, you 
said, " I will make these old sour things sweet by 
pruning them. I will hew down this wart, I will 
cut off half these limbs, I will dress down the 
tops, I will put good mulching around these old 
scabby roots, and so make next year's apples sweet." 
Well, what was the result ? Why, you never had 
so many nor so sour apples in your life as you had 
that next summer. The more you pruned and 
sawed and mulched, the more the ugly old things 
thrived, and, seeing it, you gave it up in despair. 

And that, friends, is all the good that an honest 
attempt to substitute morality for piety ever does. 
It brings the man at last to despair. When he 
finds what he cannot do unassisted of God, he 
may perhaps try a better way. When he finds 
that nursing the old devilish principle in him will 
not make it a holy principle, then perhaps he may 
go to Him who alone is able to take the evil out 
of him, and substitute the good, and ask Him to 
do it. 



WHY SO MANY MEN REMAIN UNCONVERTED. 139 

Your failure, then, resulted from this : you 
needed a new heart, a new nature, and instead 
of resolving to get that you attempted to patch 
up the old one. The stream was dirty be- 
cause the fountain was foul; and you went to 
work with the filters of your good resolution to 
make the stream pure, but never thought of the 
fountain from which every drop of the water you 
were striving to purify came, and which, as you 
bailed and filtered, far down below was growing 
more and more corrupt all the while. You see 
why you failed. You see that it w^as a foregone 
conclusion that you would fail. You never had 
a chance of success. Let me exhort you to try 
again. From this explanation of the causes of 
your defeat take new courage and make under 
better auspices another effort. This time start 
right. Begin by getting a new heart. Fling the old 
one away, and ask God for a new one. If you ask, 
" What power has He over me ? " I respond, " He 
has at least as much power over us all as the man 
I employ to graft my trees has over those trees." 
And yet that laborer will take a tree tliat bears 
to-day sour apples and make it bear three years 
from now sweet ones. What a low estimate you 
must have of the power of God if you think He 
is not able to do as much with the trees He has 
made and planted as I can with trees I never 
made, but only bought ! If I can change them, 



140 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

who will say He cannot change you? Try it, 
friend. Ask Him to do it. Ask Him to graft you 
with a higher order of life, that your fruitfulness 
may henceforth be spiritually sweet and no longer 
bitter. Take your Bible, that book in which He 
has written out all the principles and methods of 
Divine arboriculture, and do just what He has 
therein told you to do, and my word for it, you 
will find that His words are verity and His good- 
ness passing description. 

The third cause why men do not come to God is 
this : they discuss more than they do. 

Some people are forever inquiring. They are 
constantly thinking upon and investigating the 
subject of religion, but they never reach any con- 
clusion. They belong to that unhappy class of 
students whose studies never teach them anything. 
There is never any connection between their ideas 
and their conduct. Such people are found every- 
where. I presume there are men and women in 
this audience who belong to this class. They are 
always deciding that they will decide, but they 
never do. This is one class. 

Another class is made up of people who make 
discussion the refuge of their guilt. They debate 
in order that they may not decide. The moment 
you approach them upon the subject of personal 
religion, they engage you in discussion. They will 
argue, hour in and hour out, with you upon any 



WHY SO MANY MEN KEMAIN UNCONVERTED. 141 

point but the one that has a personal application 
to themselves. They will discuss any doctrine, 
debate any truth, question every duty, deny any 
obligation, contained in the Bible ; but beyond this 
they deliberately refuse to go. Eegeneration, in- 
ability, election, the divinity of Christ, eternal 
punishment, — these are the questions they love. 
They are well informed; they have studied the 
method of salvation, but they have studied it only 
in order that they may not be saved. 

Indeed, we are all too prone to debate. I am 
not sure that we who preach are not open to the 
charge of bad management in presenting the case 
intrusted to us to the public. It is possible to 
preach sermons, and very good ones, intellectually 
considered, too, that shall divert men from the 
cross. Disputatious men make poor preachers, 
if the object of preaching be to convert souls. I 
fear a great many of us preach to maintain our 
own views rather than to win men over to right 
ones. I have heard men preach in a tone and 
manner better calculated to make enemies than 
friends. Ignorant piety called it zeal, the bigots 
applauded it as courageous ; but the unregenerate, 
the very ones his speaking should have won over 
and melted, got mad, and at the close of the ser- 
mon went home, not saying, " Well, perhaps the 
preacher is right and I wrong ; I will go and hear 
him again any way," — no, they never said that, 



142 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

but they went out of that church vexed and excited, 
saying, " I '11 never go and hear that fellow preach 
again as long as I live." 

Now, I call that poor preaching. I do not care 
how zealous the man is, nor how courageous, — 
although I could never see much courage in abus- 
ing people who can make no reply to you, — apply 
to it what terms you please, it is poor preaching. 
A preacher of the gospel is in the position of a 
herald who has been sent by a king to a province 
of rebellious subjects, not to punish them, but to 
conciliate and win them over to their allegiance 
again. To this end he is to use argument, en- 
treaty, personal solicitation, great patience and 
tenderness. Paul had the true idea when he 
afl&rmed his desire to be " all things to all men," in 
order that he might save them. Now, let us 
imagine a herald sent forth, and he should begin 
his address in a way to offend the people and 
alienate them still more from the king ; suppose 
that, instead of lessening, he should multiply points 
of difference between them and the sovereign, 
talk to them in such a way as to incense them, 
and lead them to reach a wrong conclusion touch- 
ing the feelings of the king toward them, — I say, 
suppose a herald should adopt such a course, what 
would the king do ? Why, he would instantly 
recall him. And when the herald had come into 
his presence I imagine that the king would say, 



WHY SO MANY MEN EEMAIN UNCONVERTED. 143 

'' Sir, I sent you out on a very delicate mission, and 
you have acted without delicacy or tact yourself. I 
sent you out to conciliate those estranged subjects, 
to show them their foolishness in trying to resist 
me, to enlighten their minds touching their own 
interests, to make them feel that I loved them 
still, and longed to have them become my loyal 
children once more. And what have you done, 
sir ? You have acted as if you had been sent out 
by me to punisb them, to proclaim my wrath and 
not my love, to multiply differences between us, 
and shut their ears to reason by offending their 
feelings. You have made it harder for my next 
herald to get their attention and bring them over 
to a right position toward me than if you had 
never gone. You are disgraced, sir." 

I make no application of the principle, friends. 
I am not sure that any one is wise enough or good 
enough to make the application ; I leave every one 
to do it for himself. All I say is, that the prin- 
ciple is correct, and therefore safe for the purpose 
of general inference ; and the inference I make is 
this, that every caution should be used by clergy- 
men and laymen alike, in their labors for Christ, 
not to offend and alienate the very ones they are 
sent to save. To make religion seem reasonable ; 
to remove all obstacles from before slow-moving 
and wavering feet ; to make all other points in the 
discussion appear trivial but the one point of per- 



144 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

sonal salvation ; to reduce the points of difference 
to a minimum and multiply the reasons for agree- 
ment to their maximum ; to enlighten the be- 
clouded understanding with gentle wisdom ; to melt 
stony-] leartedness by the very kindliness of your 
solicitation; to shame rudeness by your courtesy 
of speech ; to make enemies admire and then love 
you ; to proclaim salvation in such a way as to 
make it come to sinners as a supply of bread to 
starving men ; to warn them of the coming con- 
demnation unless they repent, with tears in your 
eyes, as a solicitous mother with streaming eyes 
warns her unruly son of his coming ruin if he 
does not drop his evil habits, — friends, this is 
to preach the gospel. There is no other way, be- 
lieve me ; there is no other way. 

I have spoken about the unnecessary multipli- 
cation of points of difference on the part of those 
who preach, as calculated to thwart the object of 
preaching; but this principle has application to 
those who are preached to as well as to those who 
preach. I turn, therefore, to you who are not yet 
reconciled to God, and give you this same caution. 

The great point with you, friends, is not this or 
that doctrine, not whether you think and act as I 
do, not whether you agree or disagree with evan- 
gelical Christians, — the great point is this : Are you 
at peace with God ? Do you think and feel as He 
wishes you to think and feel? Is your soul, is 



WHY SO MANY MEN REMAIN UNCONVERTED. 145 

your conscience, is your conduct, are you, in all 
your powers and faculties, in harmony with Him ? 
That is the point. Do not make any reply to me ; 
do not try to debate with me. I will not debate 
with you. The hour in which you now stand is 
too solemn, the responsibility it imposes too grave, 
the opportunity it offers too sublime and blessed, 
to be frittered away in discussion. Do not say, " I 
do not believe in regeneration." I waive all that. 
Do not say, '' I don't think as you do about the 
divinity of Christ." I waive that, too. Do not 
say, " I don't believe in eternal punishment." I 
will not discuss that with you. Some other tinie ; 
not now. If you say, " When ? " I will tell you. 
I will talk to you about the doctrine of regenera- 
tion after you have once fully, penitently, prayer- 
fully, yielded your hearts to the Divine Spirit, and 
permitted Him to do in it and for it whatever 
He can. Yield first, and talk afterward. I will 
discuss the divinity of Jesus when you have 
made an honest effort to live divinely yourself. 
I will discuss eternal punishment, if you shall 
then desire to do it, when you have once begun 
to live so as to incur no condemnation. 

I leave, you see, the level of debate, and come 
down to the level of conduct. You are not afraid 
to meet me there, I trust. I leave the level of 
faith, and come down to that of practice. You 
and I do not fear that the ground will give way 

7 J 



146 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

beneath us, do we ? I leave theory behind me, I 
refuse speculation, I throw away from me, as I 
would so many husks, all verbal differences and! 
statements which would cause our minds to clash, 
and ask you as man to man, and as brother before 
a brother. How do you stand before God ? are 
you right in your habits ? are you right in your 
conduct ? are you right in your soul ? 

I look abroad over this city, and I behold it as 
a battle-field on which two opposing armies stand, 
drawn out for war. The banners of the one are 
black, and the faces beneath are such as devils 
have ; but the line is closely set, and its move- 
ment as of one man. Whether these masses ad- 
vance or halt, one mind rules all These are the 
forces of evil here. 

Over against this solid, compact front I see 
another army, whose banners are white, and the 
faces of those who serve beneath are like the coun- 
tenances of angels. But what do I behold ? A 
long, close-shouldered line, deep with the depth of 
masses, each form in its appointed place, and the 
whole, as if moved along by one thought, in sub- 
lime puissance and irresistible might, with a tread 
that shakes the earth, and a cheer that presages 
victory, advancing upon the foe ? No ! I behold 
no such sight as that. I see this heavenly army 
broken up into groups, — some in array, some with 
arms idly stacked, some in open riot against oth- 



WHY SO MANY MEN REMAIN UNCONVERTED. 147 

ers. What are they doing? They are debating 
definitions of law ; they are wrangling over con- 
stitutional principles ; they are quarrelling about 
regimental lines; discussing questions of camp 
police, personal rectitude, and which is doing 
best the wish and will of the ring. One leader is 
slandering another leader, and half the privates 
are throwing stones at their respective captains. 

And all the while the Devil laughs, and the 
black banners, in manifestation of their triumph, 
condense themselves in deeper gloom ! 

My friends, this thing must stop ; and it will 
never stop until a public opinion is created to 
stop it. Do what you can to stop it yourself. 
The man that starts unnecessary discussion here 
in this city to-day, upon theological points, acts 
wrongly. Its direct tendency is to prevent the 
conversion of souls and the union of the moral 
and spiritual forces represented by no one church, 
but by all the churches. It serves to distract the 
thoughts of those who might otherwise become 
serious, and lead them into fruitless discussions. 
It tends to alienate hearts that would otherwise 
love each other. 

But, whatever foolishness may prevail in the 
counsels of the Church touching these matters, I 
exhort you who have not yet come to God not to 
be diverted from the course 'of wisdom. The great 
point for you to decide does not concern creeds, 



148 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

nor theological definitions, nor modes of Church 
government, nor distinctions of science ; the 
great point with you is, " How do I stand with 
God ? " Waive everything else. Go down to your 
homes and places of abode, with this thought 
alone in your mind, seeing on everything you look 
at these words : '' How do I stand before God ? " 



KNOWING GOD. 149 



SEEMON IX. 

KNOWING GOD. 

"Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." — John xiv. 8. 

I WISH to speak to you touching the revelation 
of God the Father to man. What I have to 
say is not in the form of an argument or set dis- 
course so much as in the way of criticism and 
suggestion. It is the outgrowth of personal medi- 
tation upon the nature and relations of the First 
Person of the Trinity, and may be regarded per- 
haps more in the character of notes or jottings 
than of a set address. My object is to quicken 
you into thought, to clear away wrong impres- 
sions, to assist you to clearer and fuller concep- 
tions of God the Father, rather than to convince 
you of any particular truth, or confirm your pres- 
ent convictions upon any particular point. 

Now, Christ came to reveal the Father unto us. 
In Him " God was manifest in the flesh.'' How 
manifest ? you say. Even as a father is manifest 
in the son who looks just like him and acts just 
like him. The son whose every movement, every 
peculiarity of mood and temper and impulse, is 
like the sire manifests the sire. The father lives 
again in the boy. Well, God was thus manifest 



150 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

in Christ. Jesus was human ; but his moods, 
the temper of his mind, the impulses of his heart, 
were like God's. His thoughts, judgments, es- 
timation of men and things, were precisely like 
God's. His moods, feelings, aspirations, sympa- 
thies, were truly Divine. Thus God was manifest 
in Him. And He could in truth say, " He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father." For what is 
it to see a person ? Is it to see his body, his face, 
his outward, external embodiment ? Or is it to 
see him most truly when you behold the working 
of his mind, the movements of his soul, the dis- 
positions of his heart ? The latter, you say. Well, 
so it was in the case of Christ. There was a sense 
in which He did not manifest God. Christ did not 
reveal God in His relation to every order of beings, 
but He did reveal Him in His relation to man. 
That was all He intended to do. This He did, did 
perfectly. In the feelings of Christ toward men, 
God is manifest in His feelings toward you. In His 
sympathies. His love. His compassionate regard 
for the sinful, Christ was the type of God. Where 
Christ was severe, the Father is severe. Where the 
Son was compassionate, the Father is compassion- 
ate. Do not fall into the error of supposing that 
Christ makes God compassionate. It is God's 
compassion that Christ embodies. He had no 
feelings of His own, as contrasted with God's. 
Jesus was only God in the flesh. Give the as- 



KNOWING GOD. 151 

sertion its literal significance, its full emphasis. 
The flesh limited the Divine sovereignty, but not 
the Divine disposition. The object of the incar- 
nation as a revelation of God was to show us, not 
how God rules, how He creates, how He governs, 
but how He feels. The love, and not the sov- 
ereignty, of Jehovah appears in Christ. 

This was what man needed, namely, a revelation 
of God's feelings towards Him. This revelation 
was given us in Christ. Type and symbol and 
prophecy were not enough. Conduct was needed, 
a real presence was needed. How God would act, 
how speak, how feel, when brought in actual con- 
tact with the guilty, the rebellious, the underserv- 
ing, was the revelation men craved. The knowl- 
edge was given, the manifestation made, and the 
problem was, in the person of Christ, once and 
forever solved. 

I submit, then, to you all, this proposition, that 
no one can know the Father who does not know 
the Son. You might as well expect to see your 
own face without looking into a mirror as to see 
God without looking at the reflection of Him given 
in the nature and conduct of Christ. I submit, 
also, this other proposition, that no one can know 
Christ until he becomes like Christ. Feelinsf 
can alone interpret feeling. You cannot know 
what hatred is until you hate some one. Then 
you know it in all the enormity of its ugliness. 



152 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

None of the sensations can be taught out of books, 
nor can any of the higher moral qualities. To 
know what nobleness is you must be noble. Love 
is never known until you find yourself in the act 
of loving. You never know the deliciousness of 
warmth until the flush is on you. So I say, to 
know God you must know Christ ; but you cannot 
know Christ until you become like Christ. You 
must have His moods, His temper of mind, His 
moral sweetness, His profound reverence for the 
Father, before you can know Him. 

In Christ you find God, but you cannot even find 
Christ until you are in Christ. Now, then, all you 
who are students of the Divine nature, study it as 
revealed in Him who was the co-sharer of that 
nature. Eemember, also, that no study of books, not 
even of the Bible, will give you the knowledge you 
crave. By no intellectual effort, by no mastery of 
texts, by no verbal proficiency, will this wisdom 
come to you. It will come, if at all, experimentally. 
It is not illogical therefore, but absolutely accurate, 
to say that the only real knowledge of God is a 
heart knowledge. It is only saying that the only true 
knowledge of water comes through tasting. If a 
man laughs at the one, he is bound to laugh at the 
other statement. Well, friend, taste God, and you 
will know what He is ; sense Him through those 
spiritual faculties which were made by Him to 
hold, and do hold, the same relation to Him as the 



KNOWING GOD. 153 

ear does to sound or the eye to sight. Become 
Godlike and then you will know God, not before. 

I have spoken of God's being known in Christ. 
But not alone is He known in Christ. He is known 
by other methods of appropriation. One mind 
sees Him more clearly, one soul senses Him more 
fully, than another ; but both and all cannot be 
utterly blind to His presence and His glory, for he 
has advertised himself in characters both legible 
and permanent. It is with God as with a loved 
face, — wherever we look we see it. Permit me to 
point out a few of the many wrong methods of 
thought, which prevent the Deity from being a 
delight to us. 

The first is, localizing Him in the wrong place. 

I will ask you to localize God. Send out your 
thoughts after Him and find Him. Have you found 
Him ? If so, where is He ? " Away, far away, in 
heaven," you say. " Well, where is heaven ? " I ask 
again. You cannot tell me ; you can only say, 
"Away, far off, from here." "When I asked you 
to find God, your thoughts jumped up into the air 
and went racing through space. You found God 
in distance, you made Him remote ; you launched 
yourself over great abysses and chasms of space, 
over gulfs and valleys of distance you flew, until 
you touched the limit of your imagination, and 
there you fixed God. Like a silly bird, you flew as 
far as your powers might be made to go, and then 

7* 



154 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

you dropped, and where you dropped, you said 
" God." That is your mode of thought, that the 
way you find God. You locate Him far off, remote. 
You find Him at last, but a universe lies between 
you and Him. 

Now, before I mention a better method of find- 
ing God, allow me to remark upon the evil of your 
method. 

The first evil is, that it tends to a misconception 
of God. The Deity which you find at such a distance 
is a mystic, fabulous Deity. He is a cloud, — a 
white cloud, I grant, but only a cloud. He rises 
up before the gazer's eye like an awful spectre, 
majestic only because of His size. In this cloud 
is power, but it is power concealed ; in it is wisdom, 
but it is the wisdom of an oracle or a sphinx. Its 
lips are stone, its eyes are senseless. If this Deity 
should speak. His words would be the going forth 
of successive thunders. If He should change His 
locality, it would disturb the balance of the uni- 
verse. 

The fact is, friend, your Deity is an impossible 
Deity. There is no such God as your piety has 
pictured. Your first error is the error of localiza- 
tion. It is dangerous to correct conception to 
localize Him at all. Our faith teaches us that He 
is omnipresent. Let us call Him so. Who shall 
fix the spot of His habitation ? What finger may 
be so audacious as to point to this or that place in 



KNOWING GOD. 155 

the universe, intimating by its gesture that God is 
to be found there ? My friends, God is to be found 
everyivhere. He does not abide at a fixed point, 
like as we do who have bodies. God is not a body ; 
He is a spirit. He fills everything. Turn to your 
left ; He is there. Look to your right ; there, too. 
He is. He lives in the solid earth beneath your 
feet. He pervades the still ether above our heads. 
Ask that sunbeam where it can find God's house, 
and it will answer, '' I am in God's house. I was 
born in it, I move in it, I can never get out of it." 
Now, no one can pray continuously to a remote, a 
far-away God with any degree of delight, with any 
degree of affection. Love needs contact. A Deity 
at the centre of the universe is too far off for the hu- 
man heart to appropriate. A star, however bright 
its beams, cannot warm a frozen man. What would 
you think of an artist who should paint a picture 
to represent friendship, in the form of two persons, 
one standing on one beach and the other on anoth- 
er, miles apart, with a sea lying between them ? 
No artist would paint it in that way. Friendship 
would not be represented in such conditions. He 
would bring the two men together; plant them 
both on one beach, one standing close to the other, 
their hands joined in w^arm, earnest clasp. AVell, 
that is just the way it is betwixt God and man. 
They are not far off one from the other, — God at 
one point, man at another, with a vast stretch of 



156 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

distance lying between. God is not apart ; He is 
brought nigh to man in Christ Jesus. When the 
Deity took flesh and dwelt among us, He brought 
the race in close contact with Him. We are 
brought nigh. Christian friends, by the blood of 
Jesus. Prayer is not sending up a petition to a 
far-distant being, as some province of the Eoman 
Empire might send up a petition to the Emperor 
at Eome. Prayer is communion : it is friendship, 
sitting in the presence of friendship. Prayer is 
feeling : it is love lying in the bosom of love ; 
the dependent nature seeking rest and strength 
from the supporting nature. Prayer is gratitude : 
the recipient expressing its thankfulness to the 
Giver. God is to the soul what a rose is to the 
nostrils. As it converts the common air into fra- 
grance, so He intensifies our ordinary joys into 
ecstasies. 

It is only when prayer means this that it is a 
delight. Only when God is thus interpreted does 
He become a source of joy to the soul. But when 
He is thus apprehended, when He seems always 
with us, when He looks out lovingly upon us 
from everything about us, when we see the ani- 
mating spirit in the inert substance, He becomes, 
in very truth, a source of keen delight. Eight 
views of God are everything in religious life, — 
everything for growth, especially everything for 
happiness. The strongest argument against piety 



KNOWING GOD. 157 

to-day is that it does not lead to happiness; at 
least, such order of happiness as human beings 
crave. The ordinary answer on the part of the 
pulpit is, that human nature is base and does not 
crave the right order of happiness. That is only a 
makeshift. It is no answer. It is a retort, not 
an explanation. It leads to no healthy conviction. 
The objector shrugs his shoulders and closes the 
discussion. The. fact is, the response is not true. 
Human nature does love goodness, does delight 
in purity, does cling to innocence. I am speaking 
of it as manifested in civilized, in Christian coun- 
tries. I admit an original wrong bias. I believe 
in human depravity as strongly as any of you. 
Left utterly alone by God, and men become utterly 
wicked. But who of us are left thus ? Who of 
us have not been divinely acted upon ? Through 
education, through literature, through contact with 
devout souls, through the very state and structure 
of things, the celestial force which regenerates men 
has been brought to bear upon us. There is no 
such thing among us as an original nature, a natural 
nature, as you see it in heathen lands. Barbarity 
is not born in Boston. Our children are not like 
flowers planted in dampness and darkness. They 
are like roses, bedded in the richest soil and sunny 
spots. The Spirit has operated on them from 
infancy, and they show the result in their charac- 
ters. They love virtue. Obedience is not hateful 



158 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

to them. Their sins are in the way of lapses, not 
of habit. There is in their hearts no positive an- 
tagonism to the Deity. They gladly receive in- 
struction in the divine life. 

Now, my point is, that to such, God, if properly 
advertised to their attention, is a source of delight. 
He pleases them as naturally as a landscape. His 
moral excellence, His inherent goodness,^His tender 
love, find them prepared to appreciate them. But 
He must be properly advertised. Those excel- 
lences that childhood can understand and admire 
must be the ones brought to their attention. 

Now, a remote Deity children cannot under- 
stand, a God of abstract qualities their minds 
cannot apprehend. Children get at things through 
the senses, not through the reason ; and so you 
must show them the Deity in material forms if 
you are to teach them of Him. Now, education 
should be so conducted that the beauties of nature 
would be only the beauties of God. There should 
never be any distinction between the two. In 
loving what is lovely men and women love God. 
I do not love a remote Deity : my Deity is nigh. 
I see Him in the action of a thousand laws, in the 
working of numberless forces all around me. I 
learn of Him by the objective method, — I taste 
His goodness in the fruits of the earth ; I sense 
Him in the perfume of flowers ; I see Him with 
the eye, and hear Him with the ear ; I feel Him in 



KNOWING GOD. 159 

my heart. Such a Deity can be delighted in ; He 
can be loved, He can be reverenced. The pleas- 
ures of piety are natural pleasures, resulting from 
a proper use of enjoyable things. Eeligious ex- 
perience is not a strained, artificial, high-wrought 
sensation, but that which is common to all virtue, 
all rectitude, and all purity. 

Now, then, tell me if such a Deity is not calcu- 
lated to be the source of delight. Are there not 
many things in the human constitution which 
respond to His presence and interpret it, as the 
sense of hearing responds to sound ? Is there 
any reason, based upon anything existing in Him, 
why men and women should not come unto such 
a Being willingly and gladly ? How pure and 
good and amiable he must be! How generous 
and benevolent and perfect in all his ways ! 
How can such excellence go unloved ? To these 
questions there can be but one answer. As there is 
nothing existing in God to account for man's hesi- 
tation, the cause must be in man himself. And 
this cause must exist either in man's nature or his 
conduct, or in both. And this is shown from the 
fact, that, if man's nature was constructed on right 
principles, if at birth it was in active harmony 
with goodness, then it would naturally tend to- 
ward God. The law of afi&nity settles such things. 
The fact, therefore, that man does not naturally 
tend toward God must be accounted for ; and it 



160 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

can be accounted for only on the supposition that 
it is because of something repellent in God or in 
man. That God's nature and character are adapted 
to attract, and not repel, I have shown ; that He 
is calculated to be a source of delight, I have 
shown; that both in nature and human expe- 
rience we can behold unmistakable evidence that 
our happiness is His joy, is beyond contradiction. 
I wish to allude to the testimony derived from 
experience more fully. 

In all of us is a realm of concealed life. We 
speak of it to few, if any. Like Mary, we hide 
the sweetest things away in our hearts ; we muse 
silently over our treasures, and ponder within 
ourselves their blessedness. Here in this inner 
life lie the springs of our motives. Here plans 
are born, and with them the inspiration to carry 
them out. Here begin those wonderful growths 
of affection and sentiment which enlarge and en- 
noble us, until we become in very fact new men 
and women even unto ourselves. In this inner 
realm of being conscience holds her council- 
chamber, and, all unknown to any, the small and 
great questions of our lives are debated and de- 
cided. This is the realm of the Spirit ; the very 
world that God inhabits, mingling His life with 
ours silently, potently. When I stand before au- 
diences as I stand before you to-day, the thought 
will come to me, what a wealth of experience all 



KNOWING GOD. 161 

these people represent; how multitudinous their 
thoughts, how innumerable their plans, how count- 
less their joys, how manifold their struggles ! I 
stand amazed before the amount of happiness one 
single soul can retain. Who can measure the 
extent of the blessedness that one heart can feel ? 
The mother's joy, the father's pride, the lover's 
ecstasy, the hero's impulse, the martyr's holy aspi- 
ration, — who can fix the value of these ? Who can 
put a measuring-cord around this inner life of man 
and girth it ? Who can reach so high as to get 
the stature of it ? What imagination can take it 
all in and gauge its blissfulness ? How sweet this 
inner life ! How precious these holy secrets of 
men's bosoms ! How dear the brooded and brood- 
ing loves which come and make their nests in us, 
and keep us warm with a dear warmth which 
death itself cannot chill ! How blessed those 
hopes breathed only in God's ear, and scarcely 
breathed to His, — hopes whose fruition defy the 
possibilities of this world, buds that need heaven 
and its perfect conditions in which to blossom ! 
^^^30 can estimate these ? Whence come they, 
and by whom caused ? These children with celes- 
tial faces should have heavenly influences for their 
parents. They do. These are the " gifts of the 
Spirit," to which the good Book alludes. These 
are the results of Divine operation in our souls ; 
and not in ours alone, but, according to the meas- 



162 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

lire of entertainment given them, in all human 
soulsl The heathen mother bending over her first- 
born, with dewy eyes, her frame pervaded with a 
sweet ecstasy, is being '' filled with the Spirit." 
In the birth of her babe she is brought near her 
own Creator. The mystery of life envelops her. 
She stands mutely, reverently, f^ce to face with 
the great First Cause. She shall never be again 
quite the woman she has been. The poor born- 
blind creature has caught a glimpse of star and 
sun for a moment, and amid all her after-blindness 
there shall linger in her mind a memory of the 
glory. We must not think, as I often think some 
do, that God visits man only ecclesiastically, only 
through devout form and holy rite. The Spirit 
works through these, but not alone through these. 
For if so, what shall we say of all that inner hfe, 
of which I have spoken, where the pure and dear, 
sweet things of our lives are ? Are not these of 
God ? I teach you so. Yield your minds to me, 
and let me persuade you that God is in these. 
Whatever is sweetest in your hearts, in that feel 
Him to be. In the centre and underneath all your 
joys, as a king's head is underneath and in the 
centre of his crown, gemmed with jewels, place 
God. He alone is worthy to wear such a crown. 
Upon His head alone could you be persuaded to 
place it. Put it there. Let me exhort you. Bring 
out your dearest, sweetest, priceless things, — your 



KNOWING GOD. 163 

joys, your hopes, your faiths, your consecrations, 
your loves, which are to your heart what waters 
are to fountains, which if you did not have you 
would be heartless, — bring them all out, and say to 
the Lord, as the leaves of a tree say to the roots, 
'' Lord, these are all thine ! " 

It is to such a God that I ask you all to come. 
I am not talking to you, I am not thinking of you, 
as Christians, as professors of w^hat is called re- 
ligion ; I am talking to you simply as human 
beings. I am telling you of your Creator ; I am 
describing your God to you, your Father, your 
Friend ; I am proving His existence, and His dis- 
position toward you, by the blessed work He has 
wrought out and is working out in you : and be- 
cause of His goodness. His graciousness. His ever- 
blessed and ever-blessing love, I urge you to come 
to Him. Come to Him, not in the way of intellect, 
in the way of creed and rule and formula, of 
spoken vow and public covenant, — I do not . ask 
this of you to-night ; that will come by and by, 
as leaves come to a tree as soon as the sap has 
entered into the limbs and twigs of it, — come in 
the way of recognition, in the way of confession, 
in the way of appropriation, in the way of thanks- 
giving. Come to Him as men after journeying 
come back to their native land. Heaven is our 
native land. We are exiles now, we are sojourners, 
we are pilgrims. Never forget this. Never settle 



164 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

down here as if you were to stay forever, you 
know you will not ; you know that you will move 
on, ivill move on ! Why, we are all moving on. 
Can you call in the days that are passed ? Can you 
gather in the years that are gone, and live them 
over again ? Can you, by any wish or will or 
effort, stop this hour from passing ? Come, then, 
to Him whose home is heaven, and in whose pres- 
ence, if you gain it, your residence will abide 
forever. 

You cannot doubt your reception. There was a 
time when men might doubt, when men could 
not be sure of being received ; for they were 
guilty, and God is just, and men had reason for 
fear, and timidity was logical. But all this is 
changed. God has spoken in the person of His 
Son. The face of the Mighty is not veiled. The 
darkness that so long shrouded His eternal counsels 
touching man has been lifted ; the brightness of 
His love has broken through it and scattered it. 
He has risen from His throne ; He has sent forth 
his proclamation of pardon; He has put his mes- 
sage of love in your hands ; He has sent his Spirit 
into your hearts ; He has spoken. He has said it, 
and the words of his mouth are, " I would not that 
any should perish, but that all might come to the 
knowledge of the truth and live." 

I have been speaking to you, friends, of God, — 
of His locality, of His disposition. I wish to 



KNOWING GOD. 165 

know more of Him ; I w;ish to know more of Him 
in His relations, in His connections, in His results. 
I go to the Bible, and I read, '' And God said, Let 
there be light, and light was." I go, therefore, to 
the morning, and say, " morning, gates of 
pearl, clouds of amber, mists of liquid gold, 
tell me of God." I read again, " The firmament 
showeth His handiwork." I go forth at night 
and lift my eyes unto the heavens, I behold His 
handiwork, — the dome of blue, sobered by dark- 
ness ; the orbs of flame, the globes of scintillating 
light, the clustered radiance, the revolving glory, 
— and I say, " field of matchless blue, points 
of fire, and all ye beautiful creation that dis- 
tinguish night, tell me of God." I read again, 
"And God said. Let the dry land appear," and the 
waters were divided and dry land was formed. I 
turn my eyes downward, I scoop up a handful of 
soil, I find a dozen distinct elements, no needed 
thing omitted, and I say, "0 mother earth, 
womb of all life, out of whose dust man him- 
self was formed, — thou parent of all production, 
tell me of God." 

I read once more, " And God breathed into man 
the breath of life, and he became a living soul." I 
turn to my soul and question it ; I call upon its 
faculties, its powers, its energies, and say, " soul, 
child of Him of whom I long to know, tell me of 
that Almighty One, who only breathed upon a hand- 



166 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

ful of dust and it became thyself/' You see where 
I localize God. The ancients pictured Him as 
riding into sight seated in the car of the morning, 
whose wheels kindled into flame as they revolved. 
I accept their vision. I see Him thus too. The 
Psalmist saw Him in the sky of night. I admit 
the correctness of David's vision. I see Him there 
also. The devout men of old found Him in the 
high places of the earth. They always spoke of 
Him as a " Dweller among the hills." I have vis- 
ited the hills, — their mossy dells, their ridges of 
ribbed rock, their never-failing fountains. I have 
found that the Lord still loves His ancient habita- 
tion ; I have found Him among the hills. But all 
these did not satisfy. I craved a fuller knowledge, 
a more sure witness. I read of " Christ in us the 
hope of glory"; and here, in my own soul, my bosom 
for His temple, my heart His altar, my spirit His 
servant and His worshipper, — here in my bosom 
I have found my God. 



THE ORIGIN AND USES OF COMMERCE. 167 

SEEMON X. 

THE ORIGIN" AND USES OF COMMERCE. 

" Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning 
city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the hon- 
orable of the earth ? " — Isaiah xxiii. 8. 

THIS passage reveals to us the estimation in 
which merchants were held in ancient time. 
Tyre was celebrated for her commerce. Her traders 
were renowned because of their wealth. The 
treasure they amassed gave them rank and posi- 
tion. They were influential and honored. Trade 
was not regarded in old time as a menial, but a 
noble pursuit. The ambitious entered into it as a 
means to gratify their ambition. It furnished them 
with a field in which to exercise their faculties and 
develop their powers. Subsequently the sword 
gave rank and power, — valor, and not ability, lifted 
men to thrones ; but before the feudal age, in the 
ancient time, and among the older civilizations, 
" Merchants were princes, and traffickers were the 
honorable of the earth." 

It is not difficult to ascertain the origin of com- 
merce. It was born of men's necessities, and was 
characterized by the spirit of accommodation. Its 
birth dates back to the first family that existed on 



168 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

the earth. One had what another needed, and for 
it he had something to give in exchange. From 
this mutual need sprang trade. It was a family 
institution, a method by which the several mem- 
bers of the household could benefit themselves 
and each other. As families increased and popu- 
lation multiplied, trade enlarged the circle of its 
operations, became more complex and multiform 
in its action and agents, and at length grew to be 
a vast system of exchange ; the means of univer- 
sal accommodation by which every person in the 
community received and bestowed benefits, and 
acquired the facilities of a larger and happier life. 
But it still kept its original significance and family 
spirit. 

Such was the origin of trade. There was noth- 
ing selfish about it ; it was not mercenary, it was 
benevolent and humane. Centuries later, when it 
had become a profession, and its agents a class 
among other classes, there was nothing in its 
parentage of which it need be ashamed, no reason 
why those who were engaged in it should not be 
called " the honorable of the earth." 

If we would realize more fully yet the noble 
part that merchants have played in the history of 
the world, and the close relation that commerce 
has always sustained to human progress, we have 
only to investigate the origin of cities and con- 
sider the forces that pushed them upward in their 



THE ORIGIN AND USES OF COMMERCE. 169 

growth. It was trade that gave birth to our mod- 
ern cities ; a knot of traders beneath the walls of 
a castle, feeding the castle and protected by it, add- 
ing booth to booth and house to house, — so cities 
arose, so have they been builded. They were born 
of commerce and nourished by trade. The same 
is true to-day. Commercial facilities and com- 
mercial necessities are the forces that build our 
cities. New York and Boston, and every city on 
the continent, are daughters of trade. They rep- 
resent the material forces and results of civiliza- 
tion. Boston is a hive, and your ships and cars 
are the bees that bring honey to you, bringing it 
from all the world. They fly everywhere, — these 
bees with sails and wheels for wings, — their flight 
girdles the earth, and the rush and roar of their 
going and returning fill the whole air. 

Now, cities represent progress. In them you see 
the results of human invention and skill. Here 
the artist brings his canvas and the sculptor his 
marble. Here the loom is represented by the finest 
fabrics, and architecture lifts the pillars of her 
power. In cities oratory finds her school, and elo- 
quence her platform ; music her applause, and the 
poet his wreath. Every city is a record, a testi- 
mony, an advertisement. In its congregated forces 
and results you behold the people who built it. 
Study Paris, and you know the French. Bore down 
through the hundred strata that compose London, 

8 



170 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and you have perforated the English character and 
life. New York represents America ; Boston, New 
England. Indeed, cities are only lenses through 
which we study peoples. We study Egypt in the 
ruins of her cities. Di Cesnola sinks a shaft in 
Cyprus to the depth of forty feet, and in that dis- 
tance has cut through four civilizations. And all 
this is the work of merchants. Commerce built all 
these mighty cities which epitomize in their records 
the history of the human race. They have been 
the mighty factors by which God has worked out 
the problem of human progress. 

Nor would it be well for us to overlook the use 
that God has made of commerce in relation to dis^ 
coveries. The pioneers of civilization have been 
ships and traders. The race has, as it were, sailed 
to its triumphs. If I were to draw a symbol of 
human progress, I would sketch you a full, life- 
size portrait of a man standing on the deck of a 
ship ; a receding shore, thronged with cities, back 
of him, and the outline of a new world looming up 
ahead. Who are missionaries to-day? priests 
only ? No ; trade is quicker than the Foreign 
Board. What influence opened to Western civili- 
zation the sealed ports of China ? What are those 
subtle forces agitating Japan to-day? Is it re- 
ligion or science that keeps Livingstone in Africa ? 
Whence come the means to attempt, time and again, 
the great Arctic expeditions ? How God is honor- 



THE ORIGIN AND USES OF COMMERCE. 171 

ing commerce and sanctifying the worldly ambi- 
tion of men by thus using them in His blessed 
cause ! How He is working in all these material 
forces, as helps in His divine plan to bring all men 
to the knowledge of the truth ! How sweetly com- 
merce is being wedded to piety, and trade to a hu- 
mane civilization ! In view of what has been said, 
I appeal to all of you who are merchants, to all 
you who are engaged in mercantile operations, 
and to all you who are connected as agents with 
trade and commerce, to remember that you belong 
to the most useful and honorable of pursuits. You 
are in the line of direct descent from men who in 
ancient time were called the " honorable of the 
earth." Your predecessors built not only the cities 
of the ancient world, but with those cities the vari- 
ous civilizations that they expressed and embodied. 
The ancestral habit remains with you, and to-day 
cities spring up at your bidding, and human pro- 
gress hurries on or comes to a halt according to 
the degree with which you multiply or relax your 
efforts. Nor will this ever be otherwise. The 
forces you represent and the powers you employ 
are the permanent forces and powers of the world. 
More and more will ships be built and railroads 
constructed. The busy brain of man will multiply 
inventions, and wider and wider will the associa- 
tions of interest become. The law of mutual ben- 
efit, wljich now unites men, will by and by unite 



172 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

cities and nations, until the original idea shall be 
again realized, and commerce become only the in- 
terchange of things needed by brethren, and trade 
the method manifesting and supplying mutual 
wants. 

I regard trade, therefore, as a religious institu- 
tion ; selfish only within those limits in which 
selfishness loses every base and ignoble charac- 
teristic, and exists in harmonious union with fra- 
ternal impulse. I look upon the personal gain 
resulting from commercial pursuits as only an 
accident, but in no sense representative of the great 
design. God never brought such a vast system 
of complex force into the world to minister only 
to the person, to the individual. The power that 
builds cities, makes government a necessity, begets 
and nurtures civilization, serves as the pioneer 
and then the supporter of Christianity, brings 
that knowledge of men to men, upon which, when 
perfected, as a statue upon a pedestal, the recog- 
nition of universal brotherhood shall stand, — such 
a force, I say, is so vast and potential in its influ- 
ence that it forbids the thought that God brought 
it forth only to benefit the direct agents of it. N"o ; 
commerce is one of those great powers in the 
hand of God destined to serve^ enrich, and elevate, 
not one man in a community, not a group of men 
in any city, nor any particular nation, but the 
whole community, every city in the nation, and 



THE ORIGIN AND USES OF COMMERCE. 173 

every nation on the face of the earth. It is that 
mighty lever, having the Divine purpose for its 
fulcrum and the Divine hand to supply the neces- 
sary weight, by which the entire world is to be, 
and is in very fact being, lifted to a higher level 
of conception and experience. 

Permit me to give this idea a certain expansion 
that it may be impressed the more vividly upon 
your minds. I submit these two propositions. 

First. God's plan is to give every man what 
he needs, physically, mentally, spiritually. 

Second. To re-establish the family relation 
among men. 

In reference to the first of the two propositions 
I would say, that man's physical necessities are 
manifold, and as yet unsupplied. The physical 
hunger of the world has never been appeased. 
From the famine-stricken fields of China to the 
low tenements of North Street arises the moan for 
bread. Gaunt hunger — hunger which leads to 
robbery and arson, hunger that brutalizes and 
benumbs the generous possibilities of the heart, 
hunger that begets drunkenness and attempts mur- 
der, with all its concomitants of filth, rags, and 
vice — is actually in the world, and has its deadly 
clutch on the throat of thousands. All over the 
earth men and women will die to-night for want 
of bread. The shadow of this thought is black 
enough to darken the light before me as I speak. 



174 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

as if the wing of the dark angel was passing over 
"US on his mission of doom. To think that on this 
earth, where birds sing and flowers bloom and 
everything to the careless eye seems so happy, — 
to think that in our cities where so much money 
is accumulated, and so many comforts and luxuries 
are grouped, — to think that two thousand years 
after Christ proclaimed to the human race the 
principles of brotherhood, and those who believed 
on Him had all things in common, — to think, I 
say, that after all this men and women should be 
dying for the want of food ! Alas ! the old dream 
was false, the vision lied; for the golden age has 
not even yet come. 

But if men's physical wants are not yet sup- 
plied, what shall we say of their mental and 
spiritual ? If their bodies starve, how shall we 
estimate the starvation of their minds and souls ? 
No statistics can assist us to comprehend the woe 
of that multitude whose minds are undeveloped, 
and whose souls are unenlightened. The number is 
too great, and the suffering that of a privation we 
cannot gauge. All we can say is, that millions on 
the earth are living in gross barbaric ignorance. 
The powers and pleasures of knowledge are un- 
known to them. Love, culture, religion, — these 
and all the joy and hope they symbolize, — they 
have never experienced. The use of their existence 
we see not, and their destiny we cannot predict. 



THE OEIGIN AND USES OF COMMERCE. 175 

They serve no purpose, so far as we can see ; they 
produce no desirable result by living. Creatures 
of wretchedness they are born, and creatures of 
wretchedness they die. They swarm the earth. 
They puzzle the thoughtful of the world. We 
ponder their destiny in vain, and in sheer despair 
we turn from the problem that remains unsolved, 
and quiet the anguish of our thoughts by com- 
mending them to the infinite mercy of God, the 
shield of whose Fatherhood is stretched out in 
compassion over all. 

But, friends, this wretched state of things is not 
to remain forever. The future must contain some 
amelioration, or the condition of the race would 
be simply unendurable to the sensitive soul. A 
great system of amelioration has been ordained, 
and is now in full operation for the deliverance 
and elevation of mankind. The design on the 
part of God is evidently to give every man what 
he wants. The plan includes the bestowment of 
everything that man needs to minister to his com- 
fort and develop every faculty. Man is to be 
fed, clothed, educated, saved. This is to be done, 
not by making him a beneficiary, but an actor. 
He is to serve as an agent in that great system of 
benevolence by which he himself is to be blessed. 
He is to be fed by being taught how to feed him- 
self Ignorance is to give place to intelligent skill, 
indolence be supplanted with industry, the sluggish 



176 MUSIC-HALL SEKMONS. 

are to feel the stirrings of emulation, thrift and 
economy inculcated, and the poor barbarian civil- 
ized by being made an agent of civilization him- 
self. Now, I ask you to run over in your mind 
the means and methods by which such an amelio- 
ration can be brought about, and you will find but 
one power able to accomplish such a result, and 
that power may be described in the one compre- 
hensive term, — commerce. In this and this alone 
you will find the forces and principles, the agents 
and agencies, able to effect such a revolution in 
men's minds and habits as shall lift them from 
the low and narrow to the tigh and wide plane of 
thought and action and intercourse. 

This, then, as I understand it, is God's design 
in commerce. For this the vast and multiform 
forces of modern civilization are being evolved. 
It is not that individuals may be enriched, — that 
is only an accidental result, one of the minor con- 
sequences, — the real object on the part of God, 
the great result to be achieved, is and will be this : 
that every man on the face of the whole earth 
may be supplied with what he needs, in body, 
mind, and spirit, to the end that he may stand at 
last clothed in the original beauty and excellence, 
the likeness of which has for so many ages been 
lost from the earth. 

All hail, then, to you who are colaborers in the 
fulfilment of this Divine design ! Come forward 



THE ORIGIN AND USES OF COMMERCE. 177 

and take your place among the foremost of those 
who are laboring for man. In a small, narrow 
sense you are working for self; in a larger and 
wider one you are working for the race. Allow 
the dignity and significance of your position to 
enter in and possess your minds. Behold how 
God is working by you, and through you, for the 
amelioration of men the world over, and rejoice 
in that alliance which He has caused to exist be- 
tween you and the sublime efforts of the Holy 
Spirit. Nothing debases a man more than a base 
estimate of his duty and life-work. There is a way 
in which a preacher of the gospel can so regard 
his efforts as to minister to his pride and vanity, 
and thus bring out the lower at the expense of the 
higher qualities of his mind, until his spiritual 
functions are all secularized and his talents pros- 
tituted to base ends. And this law applies with 
equal force to all professions and pursuits. The 
moment you disconnect them from God, the 
moment you sever their Divine connections, they 
become thoroughly base and mercenary, so that 
the highest form of success becomes to the maker 
of that success the greatest possible disaster. 

I now ask your attention to the second proposi- 
tion, namely, God's design in commerce is not only 
to supply men with what they need, but to re-es- 
tablish the family relation and feeling among them. 

This is to be done, also, through the instrument 

8* L 



178 MUSIC-HALL SEKMONS. 

tality of commerce. Will you please reflect a 
moment upon the influence and result of traffic 
over and above the financial result ? What does 
trade mean ? simply barter, exchange ? No, it 
means more than this. It means exchange of 
ideas, communication of principles, association and 
acquaintance. It means a wider knowledge and 
juster estimate of men, the melting of prejudices, 
the overthrow of a false pride, the stamping out 
of egotism, the inculcation of a larger charity. 
If you study the traffic of the world, you will dis- 
cover that all men are mutually dependent. The 
markets of Boston are our best educators. Ex- 
amine the invoices at your Custom House, and 
you will find that we are debtors to every clime 
and nation for our comforts. The food we eat, the 
clothes we wear, the ornaments we bestow in 
friendly gifts, reveal to us how practical is that 
connection which binds us as with links of steel 
to a thousand other people. We learn, by even so 
cursory an examination, that we Americans, with 
all our wit and industry, do not monopolize the 
wisdom of the world. We realize how dependent 
we are on others, how the lines of exchange for 
mutual benefit are drawn in white around the 
globe. From such knowledge of our dependence 
on others is born esteem for them. Whoever 
helps us becomes in some sort a brother to us. A 
bond is estabhshed which needs only the passage 



THE ORIGIN AND USES OF COMMERCE. 179 

of time and the power of the Divine Spirit to 
strengthen. These, being granted, and the idea of 
fraternity is perceived and acknowledged. And 
so, using the material from which to evolve the 
spiritual, God is fast bringing us to that state of 
mind. He is educating us to that degree of appre- 
hension, which being possessed will cause us to re- 
gard all the nations as only members of one family, 
and to see in every human face, black or white, the 
likeness of a brother. This, the recognition of 
universal brotherhood, is the port into which our 
hearts, like ships, shall at last sail. For ages men 
have been divided into cliques and clans, each 
cursing, fighting, and underrating the others ; for 
ages barbarism, drawing the stimulus of its life 
from ignorance, has filled the world with hostility, 
and drenched the earth with blood. Like brothers 
who had lost the memory of each other's voices 
and the recollection of each other's faces, the 
nations have fought each other, not knowing that 
they were hitting brothers ; but now the likeness 
is being perceived, and men shrink from enter- 
ing into conflict with their fellow-men. And 
when, as I have said, you search for the cause of 
this fraternity, which distinguishes, beyond any 
other one characteristic, modern civilization, you 
find that trade and commerce have, beyond every- 
thing else, been the means employed of God to 
accomplish this blessed result. 



180 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

I have now announced what is the object of 
commerce, and you who are engaged fti those gain- 
ful pursuits which belong to it and represent it 
can perceive the divine design of your lives. You 
behold how noble is the opportunity and how sub- 
lime may be the ambition of the merchant. By 
the nature of his activities he is irresistibly linked 
with God's great plan of civilizing and elevating 
man. His hand is familiar with the forces that 
push on the world. Among the forces of benevo- 
lent action he stands so influential that his very 
position supplies the exhortation to consecration. 
The man who guards the sleep of an army miist 
be patriotic ; the nature of his duty urges him to 
be faithful. And so with you who are merchants : 
your position in the ranks of those agents and 
agencies designed by God to be for man's amelio- 
ration is so prominent and influential that it sug- 
gests the line of obligation and duty. 

I know that, in one sense, the election is not 
with you. In every life is that which personal 
selfishness cannot direct, cannot control. The 
bird that sings only for his own pastime has blessed 
the sick child that lies in pain in the chamber be- 
neath whose window the song was poured forth. 
Without knowing it, the bird has done a blessed 
deed. He has been unconsciously benevolent. So 
it is with you. No man can keep his life wholly 
to himseK. He cannot monopolize the benevolent 



THE OEIGIN AND USES OF COMMERCE. 181 

influence of his activities. Like the Nile, he over- 
flows the banks of his selfish purpose and is poured 
out in blessing over the whole world. We are 
greater than we seem to ourselves when we plan 
selfishly. Miserly men misuse wealth, but in the 
getting of it they assisted a hundred industries. 
It hurts them, but it blessed others. They are 
smaller, but a thousand other men are larger, be- 
cause of their , hoarded treasure. Every man, 
therefore, that plans or works, invents or executes, 
does indirectly assist mankind. Selfishness, so 
wisely has God ordered things, becomes generous 
in spite of itself. 

But, friends, such indirect, involuntary benevo- 
lence does not fulfil our obligations or dignify our 
calling. There is a law resting upon us all to ben- 
efit men directly and -with personal consecration. 
Our duty is to so live as to not only better others, 
but to better ourselves and ennoble our calling. 
What we do should be so done as to incline us to 
do noble things. A deed which, being done, leaves 
the doer no better than before it was done should 
never be done at all. Every day should fit us for 
heaven by as much as it brings us nearer heaven. 

Now, the da;nger is that the young men in this city 
who are just entering into business life will put a 
base estimate upon trade, will look upon it only 
as the means of amassing wealth. The age is ma- 
terialistic, and hence the value of money is greatly 



182 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

exaggerated. Money can buy many things you 
need • but there are things you need, friends, which 
money cannot buy, no matter how much of it you 
have. It can buy food and clothes, books and cul- 
ture, social position and a certain low order of 
power. It carries wdth it a gross kind of influence. 
But it cannot buy you integrity, nor virtue, nor 
true refinement. It cannot huj you love, nor 
domestic happiness, nor peace of mind, nor gener- 
ous thoughts while living, nor calm and happy 
thoughts when dying. It will buy you the fear 
and flattery of those base as yourselves, but it can 
never buy for you the respect of the just nor 
the admiration of the good. The annals of your 
city are not poor in names held in high esteem. 
But the names of those merchants that Boston 
honors are the names of men w^ho were not merely 
rich, but also good. The Lawrences, the Abbotts, 
the Quincys, the Gores, were rich in character as 
well as in money. It would be grossly unjust to 
measure them by the monetary standard. I seem 
to see these noble men and their companions in 
greatness standing before me in the light of that 
eternal world into which they have passed, discon- 
nected from their former earthly wealth, separate 
from the accidental honors of their mortal life, and 
I praise God that, seeing them thus, they still seem 
great, and worthy of that applause and admiration 
which we have been accustomed to give them. 



THE ORIGIN AND USES OF COMMERCE. 183 

Nor would it be an exaggerated expression of my 
feelings should I invoke the spirits of these men 
who did so much for the honor and prosperity of 
Boston to still abide in the city of their love, and 
animate you who are building the superstructure, 
the foundation of which they laid, with tlie same 
exalted spirit which in their day and generation 
distinguished them. And this I say, that if you, 
the merchants of this city, should unfortunately 
yield yourselves to the enticements of mercenary 
considerations, and become ambitious only to ac- 
quire wealth ; if you should ignore the close con- 
nection of your calling with God's design to benefit 
men, and live only to amass that order of wxalth 
which rust corrupts and thieves steal, then would 
you not only be living in disobedience to God's 
command, but also at variance with the early tra- 
ditions of your own class and city. I beseech you, 
one and all, not to commit so suicidal an act. Ee- 
member that you type and control the future. 
The clay is not more subject to the moulder's hand 
than is the character of your successors to your 
influence. In mercantile character there are no 
sudden changes, no swift transitions from one 
form of conduct to another. The sons will act as 
the father, and the clerk, when he has become a 
partner, be as the head of the firm is to-day. If 
you are open and above-board in all your dealings, 
high-toned and strictly honest, benevolent and 



184 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

humane, so will your son be when you have passed 
to your reward, and he in turn occupies your pres- 
ent position. If, on the other hand, you are tricky 
and basely cunning in your way of doing business ; 
if you cheat every one, including the government, 
of all you can with safety ; if, fired with the de- 
sire for sudden wealth, you push into strange and 
questionable enterprises, and adopt a flashy, high- 
pressure style of doing business, — then you are 
undermining the virtue of your clerks, introdu- 
cing a false standard of success, and sowing seed 
that will surely produce a crop of thieves, forgers, 
and signers of false invoices thirty years from to- 
day. Exceptions there may be, but this is the law. 
Honorable merchants there will be then as now, 
even as the sons of some drunkards remain tem- 
perate ; but they were nevertheless educated in a 
vicious school, and that large mass, found in every 
community, who are upheld by no deep religious- 
conviction, but subject to the predominating in- 
fluence, will catch the contagion of your evil ex- 
ample and repeat your faults and vices in even 
larger proportions. I appeal unto you, therefore, 
merchants of Boston, in the name of that future 
over which you hold such sovereignty and whose 
character will take shape and color from yours, — 
I appeal unto you in the name of all your clerks 
who are subject day by day to the influence of your 
position and example, and who, being pupils in a 



THE ORIGIN AND USES OF COMMERCE. 185 

school of which you are teacher and head, are be- 
ing taught by you the lessons of virtue and honor 
or of trickery and baseness, — I appeal to you in the 
name of the city of which you are so justly proud, 
and whose honor is intrusted to your keeping,— ^ and 
lastly, I appeal to you in the name of that Divine 
love and mercy to man whose servants and agents 
you are or should be, — to do only those things 
which, being known, would give you honor among 
men, and which, when revealed, as they surely will 
be at the last great day, will enable you to stand 
blameless before God. And wherein any of you 
have done other than this, as some of you may, — 
for temptation is common to men, and it is human 
to err, — repent and change your conduct, lest you 
lead others also into wickedness, and a worse thing 
fall upon you. 



186 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



SEEMON XI. 

WHY THE RELIGION OF NEW ENGLAND HAS FAILED 
TO CONVERT THE PEOPLE. 

** Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, 
that they might be saved." — Romans x. 1. 

THE gravest problem that we can consider to- 
day is this, Why does Christianity fail to 
convert the people ? How is it that here in 
New England, with tradition and custom in its 
favor, and among a people peculiarly given to re- 
ligious impressions, religion is professed by com- 
paratively so few ? You may go into any New 
England village, and you will find that the major- 
ity of the professional and business men are non- 
professors, and connected with none of the many 
local churches in the place. And not onty is this 
true touching the middle-aged, but it is equally, 
if not more, true in the case of the young men of 
the town. And this I regard as true, and capable 
of being proven by actual canvass, that religion, as 
it is now being proclaimed from the pulpits, and 
advertised by the church machinery of the coun- 
try, is not winning to itself, to any such degree as 
it should and might be expected to do, the profes- 
sional and business men of the country. You may 



WHY NEW ENGLAND RELIGION HAS FAILED. 187 

go into any church in this city and make the 
proper inquiries, and you will soon discover that in 
the congregation are scores of men from twenty to 
sixty years of age who do not belong to the church, 
and are apparently unaffected by the preaching of 
the gospel. The pulpit seems to have no per- 
suasive, efficient influence upon them. They lis- 
ten with courtesy to what the preacher has to say, 
hear him go through, week after week, his formal 
theological statements of what is necessary to sal- 
vation with patient indifference or good-natured 
incredulity, and that is all. They take no step 
forward. They are no nearer being Christians, in 
the technical sense of the phrase, at the end of 
the sermon or of the year, than they were at the 
beginning. 

Now, friends, I, for one, wish to understand this 
matter. I wish to know how such a state of 
things has arisen, and what perpetuates it. How 
is it that so- many men, who, by reason of their 
position and ability, should be in actual and active 
connection with the religious forces of the land, 
are not ? Is the cause of this failure to convert 
them to be found in religion itself, in the mode 
and spirit of proclaiming it, or in the extraordi- 
nary hardness of their hearts ? Does the fault lie 
at the door of those who hear, or of those who 
preach ? What, in a word, is the reason why these 
men are not converted ? 



188 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

Well, friends, I will give you, so far as I can in 
one address, my views upon this perplexing prob- 
lem. I do not know that my views will agree 
with yours. On such a question difference of 
opinion is to be expected. I may not be right in 
my own conclusion. I only hope to start the dis- 
cussion, not end it. The question is so grave and 
portentous in its character that it challenges debate 
and forbids silence. The preacher who timidly 
confines himself to amiable routine utterances, and 
steers safely clear of questions like this, is an in- 
capable, or untrue to the Master's service. The 
pulpit that does not critically examine the causes 
of its own weakness and inefficiency is too igno- 
rant to know its duty, or too cowardly to do it. 

The fact, then, which we are to account for is 
this, that religion has failed, and is to-day failing, 
in New England and the country at large, to win 
over into heart alliance with itself a large part of 
our population. This no one can deny. Put the 
records of church membership over against your 
census reports, and you will behold at once the 
truth of the proposition. In the light of such a 
comparison you will perceive the awful magnitude 
of that failure which attends the present adminis- 
tration of religion in the country. 

Please to note the character and extent of the 
failure. If it were only a numerical failure, it 
were weU; for numbers do not always represent 



WHY NEW ENGLAND RELIGION HAS FAILED. 189 

power. But it is a failure in respect to quality as 
truly as of quantity. The men of whom I am 
speaking as unconnected with the churches and 
apparently unreached by the pulpits, are men of 
influence. They are wealthy, they are energetic, 
they are learned, they are refined. They repre- 
sent the influence associated with money, capacity, 
kuowledge, and culture. They type and embody, 
not only the grosser, but the higher forces which to- 
day are operant for good and evil in American soci- 
ety. Among them are to be found the warmest 
hearts, the finest minds, and choicest spirits among 
us. Among them, also, are to be found many of 
the most energetic and promising young men of 
the land. If the Church of Christ loses these, she 
loses the nutrition from which she must derive 
those supplies of new blood without which her 
vital current will be perilously thin and her veins 
withered. Without these she surrenders the 
hope and promise of future expansion and great- 
ness. 

You will observe, also, as you study this sub- 
ject, that these unconverted men and women are 
not hardened and excessively wicked. Their hearts 
are not antagonistic to religion beyond the average 
disinclination of spiritual things common to all. 
They are not irreverently sceptical ; they are not 
profane ; they are not bitterly perverse. They 
are humane, generous, reverent^ open to argument 



190 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and spiritual persuasion. It is easy for the min- 
ister and deacons to call them " gospel-hardened." 
That is a quick, and, I fear, the usual method of 
solving the whole problem, and dismissing from 
our consciences the ugly question. But the asser- 
tion or conclusion is not true. They are not 
^^gospel-hardened." They are not given over of 
the Divine Spirit. They lead moral lives. They 
have religious sensibilities. They often set a wor- 
thy example to professors themselves. And so 
the kingly possibility of gaining them to Christ, 
which we had stabbed with this cruel assertion, 
comes back to mar our feasting, and push our easy, 
self-satisfied complacency from its stool. It will 
not " down at our bidding." And the question re- 
turns in all its weight and solemn significance, 
" Why are these men and women not converted ? " 
Now, one reason, as I understand the matter, 
why religion has not been more successful in gain- 
ing disciples among the class I have mentioned, is 
because it has been associated with cant and for- 
malism. By formalism I mean a piety of form, 
a routine observance of religious duty, an outward 
ceremonial expression of devotion. As illustrative 
of this may be instanced formal and repetitious 
prayers by the laity and ministers both, hackneyed 
exhortation, and the periodical anxiety for souls 
which distinguishes many churches. Cant is more 
difl&cult to describe, as it may be more wicked in 



WHY NEW ENGLAND RELIGION HAS FAILED. 191 

spirit. It may be unconscious, in which case it is 
innocent in the person using it, but none the less 
mischievous in its influence on others. It may, 
on the other hand, be conscious, in which case it 
is hypocritical and thoroughly base. In one form 
or the other it exists in Xew England to an alarm- 
ing extent. You will find it in pulpit and pew, 
in prayer -meetings and conference-rooms, and es- 
pecially in boards appointed by the churches to 
examine candidates of church membership. Such 
assumed solemnity of face and voice, such studied 
efforts after the unnatural in tone and bearing, 
such overwhelming anxiety for souls, — which, if 
real, would break the heart that feels it, but which 
is nevertheless carried without loss of appetite or 
sleep, — such devotional stupidity and pious ig- 
norance, as are manifested by many professors of 
religion in our churches, is enough to sharpen the 
edge of satire against it and disgust the manly. 
You can put the mantle of heaven upon the 
shoulders of bigotry and call it orthodoxy if you 
please, but I warn you that the masses will de- 
nounce it if you do. The humane and charitable 
element, I observe, lives ; but bigotry leads a wolfs 
life, and civilization, as it advances, is forever push- 
ing it back into the recesses of barbaric existence. 
You can, if you please, put men into office in your 
churches who will go on for twenty years making 
the same prayer, and that, too, when it was never 



192 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

good enough to he made at all ; hut you do it at 
the risk of making your prayer-meeting an expe- 
rience of pain and mortification to the intelhgent, 
and of making religion, in the person of your 
ignorant deacon, a laughing-stock to the village. 
And no greater blunder can be made by the 
churches than to so conduct their administrations 
as to become the butt against which every wit in 
the village shall direct his arrow. When religion 
is so advertised in a town as to be laughed at, you 
may despair of its success in that town. The 
forces against it for the time being are' stronger 
than the forces in its favor. 

In addition to this conscious or unconscious 
formalism in our churches, whose influence is most 
disastrous, there has been also not a little hypo- 
critical cant. A most exaggerated and unnatural 
kind of piety has been in vogue. Vanity and 
pride have masked themselves behind the veil of 
meekness and lowliness of spirit, and the veil has 
been too thin to conceal the cunning back of it. 
Their prayers were better than their lives, and 
men saw it and were indignant at the fraud put 
upon their credulity. In the vestry the man was 
an extraordinary saint ; in the transaction of his 
business he was an ordinary sinner. Men knew 
that he was more or less a hypocrite, — that he 
had two faces and two sets of tones in his voice 
which he could use at will. They knew he was 



WHY NEW ENGLAND RELIGION HAS FAILED. 193 

not one half as good as he pretended to be, and 
yet they saw him honored by the church with an 
election to the deaconship, and looked up to as a 
leader of the revival. The church put him for- 
ward as the best illustration of its piety, and the 
community, who had no faith in the man, soon 
grew to have no faith in the church or the piety it 
represented. And so the years passed, and two 
thirds of a generation went into their graves un- 
converted, their possible influence wasted ; and the 
connection which should be continuous between 
the church and each successive generation was 
broken. 

But there is another reason why so many men 
and women in New England and the country re- 
main unconverted, besides those we have already 
mentioned, and it is this: the preachers have 
preached, not the gospel in all its sweet tender- 
ness and vital adaptation to the average man's 
every-day life, but a theology inferred from the 
gospel through the Epistles of Paul ; and in doing 
this employed a terminology of definition and vo- 
cabulary of expression neither understood nor rel- 
ished by the masses. In respect to the gospel, by 
which I mean the simple, easily understood words 
of Him who " spake as never man spake," as con- 
trasted with the Epistles of Paul, from which we 
have derived our systematic theology, I do not 
wish to suggest any essential antagonism between 

9 M 



194 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

the two, nor intimate that Paul's theology was not 
legitimately derived from the teachings of the 
Master. I am speaking touching the mode of 
teaching the Divine truths, not endeavoring to es- 
timate the degrees of inherent excellence between 
various portions of the Bible ; and, so speaking, I 
declare my conviction that for the practical pur- 
poses of the preacher no Epistle of Paul or of any 
other Apostle can stand a moment's comparison 
with the words of Jesus himself. Paul was a 
scholar, but Jesus was a Saviour. The one spoke 
through the medium of a human intelligence, as- 
sisted by the Divine Spirit to an extent to insure 
honesty of purpose and partial illumination of 
mind in respect to the great truths he strove to 
systematize. The other spoke from the full, over- 
flowing depths of Divine Consciousness itself, and 
with the directness and inclusiveness of one who 
was both author and chief agent of the scheme of 
redemption He embodied. He who reads Paul 
often reads mystery ; but the words of the Saviour 
are invariably plain and easily understood. The 
path of theological discussion is often crooked and 
blind, it is less a road than a labyrinth ; and many 
minds have groped vainly for the clew which 
might lead them from the bewildering mazes into 
the clear light of truth, groped and found not, and 
died at last in the exquisite torture of that be- 
wilderment which forbids peace and hope to the 



WHY NEW ENGLAND RELIGION HAS FAILED. 195 

departing soul. But the path pointed out by 
Christ in the Gospels is across a level country, 
flooded with the clear sunlight, and so plain that a 
wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein. 
It is this world-wide difference between Paul 
and Jesus, between an inferred theology and 
simple direct statement from the mouth of God 
Himself, which supplies to all preachers the true 
rule and spirit of preaching. Were I to begin 
my ministerial life again, I would begin and end 
my preparation to preach the gospel with the 
Gospels. The words of Jesus, and not of Paul, 
should receive my prolonged and devout attention. 
I would be a pupil of the Master, and not of the 
man. For in the actual utterances of the Saviour, 
beyond doubt, we can find not alone all that is 
essential to the salvation but also to the edification 
of the soul in the divine life. Not only what He 
said, but how He said it, should command my atten- 
tion. I would fit myself for the pulpit by a study 
of the manner as well as the matter of Christ's 
discourses. For I know not that book in which 
can be found statement so clear, argument so un- 
answerable, appeal so tender, warning so pathetic, 
denunciation so sublimely fierce, and satire so 
keenly edged, as in the gospel narrative of the 
Saviour's speeches and conversations. Every word 
He ever uttered of which we have record should be 
memorized by me, with the local circumstances 



196 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and connection of the same. In imagination I 
would preacli to His audiences as He preached to 
them. I would, as nearly as it is in my power, 
become like Him in spirit and in method, to the 
end and in the blessed hope that when I came to 
stand before tempted, sinful, and dying men, some- 
thing of my great Exemplar's likeness might be 
seen in and shine out from me. 

I am confident, — and I believe it to be the 
concurrent opinion of thoughtful men everywhere, 
— I am confident, I say, that we need less of Paul 
and more of Jesus in our pulpits and prayer-meet- 
ings. Not Jesus as interpreted in the way of cant 
and superficial, pious sentimentalism, but as in- 
terpreted in the way of charity, humanity, and 
compassion, < — Jesus, the Saviour of the world, the 
brother of men, the helper of the weak, the great, 
unchangeable, divine source of compassion and 
love, and not as the centre of a mere theology or 
patron of an ecclesiasticism, — is what New Eng- 
land needs and what New England is hungering 
and thirsting for. 

The people are wearied with the proclamation 
of the gospel in theologic form. They tire of set 
terms and phrases. The old Calvinistic terminol- 
ogy and vocabulary they do not understand nor 
care for. The sermon does not affect them. It 
does not stir them. There is no application to it. 
It is like the touch of a palm that has no bone in 



WHY NEW ENGLAND EELIGION HAS FAILED, 197 

it ; a good sort of a hand enough, but there is no 
grip to it. What men need is something they can 
understand and feel the force of, — an interpretation 
of God that makes Him real and tangible to their 
minds and hearts, and presents their duty in such 
a light that it shall afjpear reasonable. Whatever 
is artificial or exaggerated in manner and state- 
ment, whatever seems above the range of reason 
and common-sense, they do not understand, or if 
they do understand they resent. This also is ob- 
servable, that men accustomed to deal with affairs 
in a practical way, and who have been taught 
pliancy and toleration by their daily contact with 
people of many countries and dissimilar opinions, 
are offended at exhibitions of bigotry and mental 
littleness. A theology that seems the theology of 
only a sect or denomination they naturally sus- 
pect. They cannot give assent to what seems in- 
adequate to express the Divine Being. If the 
Deity is to be defined at all, then must a defini- 
tion be given to Him large and luminous enough 
to express the sphered glory of His attributes. A 
narrow conception of God they reject, and the man 
who makes it can never be intrusted by them 
with the leadership of their souls. This leads me 
to say, that the matter of written creeds has much 
to do with the subject we are discussing. 

There are some that say that New England re- 
jects creeds, that the people resent such inter- 



198 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

ference with their liberty of thought, and that those 
who believe in written statements of belief are 
fighting against the spirit of the age. Now this 
"spirit of the age" argument is a very handy 
one, and such phrases as "liberty of thought" 
and ''resenting the idea of a creed" sound well 
when declaimed before a popular audience in a 
certain dramatic tone of voice and accompanied 
with a certain imperiousness of gesture ; but I look 
upon it as a specimen of ignorance touching what 
is the real spirit of the age and the drift of public 
opinion in New England, or an example of what 
might be called cunning elocution. I take no 
stock, as men of business say, in that sort of dec- 
lamation. The true analysis of the New England 
character, as I understand it, is this. In it, in the 
first place, is a broad streak of intense radicalism. 
The New-Englander is inquisitive touching every- 
thing, including religion. He is not stupidly rev- 
erent. He can imitate, but no imitation can ex- 
haust the forces of his nature. He is so capable 
that he must be original. In temperament he is 
sanguine and impatient. He is more dangerous 
tied up than he is let loose. Give him room in 
which to exercise to his heart's content and to 
occasionally indulge in his antics, and you are safe; 
for then he is the most useful and harmless of 
beings. But he needs a prairie for his playground 
and a Niagaja for his water-power. 



WHY NEW ENGLAND RELIGION HAS FAILED. 199 

Now, such a being will not be lashed and carded 
down to one position. He will not endure dicta- 
tion, and cannot understand stagnation. To him 
motion is life, and his idea of heaven a prolonged 
and glorious flight. Progress, development, im- 
provement on the old, evolution, by which the 
small shall become great and the narrow wide, — 
these, put in flesh and blood, and living in a cli- 
mate charged with vital and vitalizing elements, 
compose and illustrate my idea of a I^ew England 
man. 

But lying closely alongside of this radicalism of 
impulse, and overlapping it, you will observe in 
every well-constructed New England mind a con- 
servatism which acts as a brake upon the flying 
wheels of his thoughts and keeps them under con- 
trol. This conservative element in our character 
crops out in everything, and either prevents revolu- 
tion or checks it before it has gone beyond the point 
of safety. The strength of this characteristic can be 
gauged approximately in the slowness with which 
we accept ideas that include a radical change in 
the mode and fashion of our living, or the struct- 
ure of our government. 

In proof of this, I might point you to the history 
of reforms in this coujitry, and ask you to ob- 
serve how slowly they advanced to their triumph. 
They had to beat their way up against wind and 
tide. Take the adoption of the Constitution by 



200 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

the several States as an illustration. How long the 
scales hung in even balance ! And it was doubt- 
ful whether we should ever be a nation or not, 
and a third of the nation to-day believe in local 
independence, State sovereignty, as opposed to na- 
tional authority. Observe the conservatism man- 
ifested in the antislavery contest. I admit that 
selfish and mercenary motives strengthened it, but, 
independent of these, there was a mighty conserv- 
ative force against any agitation or change that 
should imperil the Union. Take again the Uni- 
tarian revolt against the theology of the ancients. 
Wonderfully fortunate in its leaders as it was, 
capturing at one dash the intellectual centre of 
New England and the country; bulwarked as it was 
behind the culture of Boston on the one hand and 
the renown of Harvard on the other; marvellously 
assisted as it was, also, by the bigotry and dog- 
matism of orthodoxy, — still, in spite of all these 
accidental and local advantages, the innovation on 
the old ideas, far from sweeping over New England, 
not only did not pass to any considerable extent 
beyond the boundary of the State, but did not eveii 
succeed in carrying the city itself. In addition to 
these, as a final and crowning illustration of New 
England conservatism, might be instanced the " wo- 
man's movement," as it is called, — a movement 
so just and reasonable in its claims, v/hen sepa- 
rated from its unfortunate entanglements, that lit- 



WHY NEW ENGLAND BELIGION HAS FAILED. 201 

erally no argument can be brought against it, — 
held in check for the most part by the conserv- 
atism of New England character and the people's 
inbred fear of change. 

Now, friends, I have this to say : that any one 
who supposes that a people so circumspect and 
conservative, so fixed and settled in their opinions, 
and so positive in their convictions, as we are, fear 
creeds, are frightened at exact definition, or resent 
carefully formed statements of principles, must be 
startlingly ignorant of the character of the people 
to whom he would fain become a leader, and of the 
" spirit of the age,'' of which he so oracularly dis- 
cusses. I dare to say that, instead of disliking 
positiveness of statement in religious matters, 
people desire and demand it, and that neither in 
religion nor politics can any party make progress 
in America that does not put before the people a 
clear, explicit statement of its belief and purposes. 
It is the church without such a statement, and not 
the one with it, that will find it difficult to maintain 
its hold upon the minds and hearts of the masses. 

But in spite of all this, recognizing the value 
and necessity of creeds, written statements of be- 
lief, nevertheless I believe that they constitute 
one of the reasons why many of the most talented 
and influential men and women in New England 
are not converted and led to make a public profes- 
sion of religion. 

9* 



202 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

In many of our evangelical churches the creed 
is so inclusive of details in doctrine and scriptural 
interpretation, and so exacting and arbitrary in its 
terminology, that no independent and partially in- 
formed mind can honestly, at that point of spiritual 
understanding and development at which people 
stand when coming before the committee of con- 
ference, give unqualified assent to it. In addition 
to this obstacle, the ruling spirit of the committee 
is often an over-earnest or bigoted man, who has 
no doubt but that the whole universe of truth is 
enclosed within the sweep of his own little pair of 
compasses, and who feels that he is placed at the 
gate of heaven, — namely, his little church, — to 
protect it from the entrance of unworthy applicants. 
The conference, therefore, often becomes only an ex- 
amination, and an examination, too, conducted in 
such a manner as to become inquisitorial and hence 
offensive ; and an impression is allowed to go forth . 
of a character that proves a stumbling-block to the 
timid, and not to these alone, but to all who hold 
themselves superior in things of the soul to human 
dictation, and especially the dictation of narrow- 
minded men. 

This I regard as a fair statement of the question, 
and an accurate description of the state of things 
in New England. Our theology is too formal, and 
our preaching of it too commonplace. Our creeds, 
while right and proper in their statement of the 



WHY NEW ENGLAND RELIGION HAS FAILED. 203 

great essentials of Christianity, are carried too far 
into details and too arbitrarily applied to the indi- 
vidual judgment. Our committees of conference 
become as a rule committees of inquisitorial exam- 
ination, and fall into the hands of men who have 
thought too little themselves to appreciate the 
difficulties and agonies of those with more active 
minds. And in these respects, so far as the prac- 
tice and facts sustain the statement, our orthodox 
churches are beyond doubt in opposition to the 
spirit of the age and out of harmony with the peo- 
ple. And it behooves us all to look to it that what is 
wrong in our management of spiritual forces should 
be remedied, and what is weak strengthened. 

If you would allow me one other suggestion in 
the same line of thought, I would say that another 
reason why many are not converted is to be found 
in the weakness of the pulpit. I think it beyond 
dispute that the pulpit of New England to-day is 
a weak pulpit, — weak in powers of statement and 
oratorical efficiency. I grant it the possession of 
piety, but it seems to be largely lacking in ability. 
And this state of things has arisen from two 
causes : first, from the entrance into the ministerial 
profession of men who, neither by natural ability 
nor fitness for the profession, have a right to be in 
it ; and, secondly, because many of those who are 
by nature capable are too indolent to enlarge their 
native capacity and improve their gifts. I know 



204 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

the severity of this charge, and I bring it only be- 
cause of a sincere feeling that I speak the simple 
truth, and of a knowledge based upon a Avide and 
thorough study of the subject. In no profession 
are there such rewards for activity, or such temp- 
tations and opportunity for laziness and shirking, 
as in the ministry. The punishment for the law- 
yer who neglects his client's cause is swift and 
sure; the physician who commits a malpractice 
is severely dealt with ; the lyceum lecturer who 
brings a weak production to the platform is de- 
serted by the people : but a minister, by cunningly 
arranged exchanges and use of old sermons, can 
lead an indolent life for years and not be detected 
in a way to reform his habits or dismiss him from 
the profession and service he has disgraced and 
trifled with. I believe that there are before me 
to-night hundreds of business men, including these 
reporters here, who work two hours where the 
average New England clergyman works one. I 
notice that all men in business and professional 
life who have amassed wealth or attained honor 
are great workers for the first ten or twenty years 
of their career. They have to be. That is the rule 
and the only method of success. 

In order to make our pulpits strong, then, that 
they may be influential among the influential and 
command the respect of the capable and refined, 
I do not hesitate to say that our young men must 



WHY NEW ENGLAND RELIGION HAS FAILED. 205 

work longer and harder than they are doing. They 
need more study-work. They must think more, 
pen in hand. They must ponder the Word of God 
in their hearts, and in the silence of the night, when 
other men sleep and the house is hushed, muse 
and reflect on the sources of spiritual power. They 
had better, at this stage of our intellectual and spir- 
itual development, neglect everything else than 
their sermons, because it is evident that in this 
country and in our day public speech, combined 
with the press, is the most direct and potential 
means to reach the hearts and consciences of men. 
With weakness in our pulpits, we shall have indif- 
ference or scepticism in the pews, a public neglect 
of the sanctuary and disregard of the Sabbath, and 
a population able to vote their impiety and loose- 
ness of morals into statute, lacking the first ele- 
ment of true greatness, which is reverence for the 
Deity. 

And now, friends, before I close this the last 
sermon I shall preach to you from this platform, 
permit me to declare my unalterable conviction 
that the Bible is a revelation from God touching 
the way we should live in this life and the way we 
can be saved from the penalty of our sinfulness on 
earth in the world to come. To me the Scriptures 
become dearer as the years pass, and the Saviour 
published to my knowledge therein more and more 
the hope of my soul. The mercy of God rises on 



206 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

me like the light of morning on the earth. My 
heart receives it as the earth receives the solar 
beam. It delivers me from the bondage of darkness, 
and stirs me with a vital warmth. With simple, 
earnest phrase, unadorned with the graces of elo- 
quent speech, with nothing but the honesty of the 
effort to recommend it, I urge you to accept the offer 
of pardon of all your sins contained in the gospel. 
Of theology, technically considered, I do not 
speak. Our intellectual differences shall be laid 
aside until with clearer vision we behold the truth 
in all its relations in the world to come. I imagine 
that many who fought each other here and lost 
their spiritual brotherhood in bitter debate have 
found a common platform and joined hands in an 
everlasting compact before the Throne of God. 
Of our imperfect lives, of talents buried, of oppor- 
tunities neglected, of sins committed, of sonship 
with God forfeited by our ungrateful conduct, of 
persistence in evil courses when the right was 
made plain, of inward repentance and longings 
felt in common for something better than we have 
yet attained, — of these I speak, a brother among 
brothers, a sinful man among sinful men; and I 
say that " our sins, though they be as crimson, 
shall become white as wool ; though they be like 
scarlet, they shall be as snow." I do not suppose 
that in the intricate and changeful courses of this 
life it will be permitted unto all of us who are 



WHY NEW ENGLAND EELIGION HAS FAILED. 207 

here to-night to meet again. We shall go onr 
several ways and along paths widely apart, and at 
different periods of time make our exit from this 
world. I invoke, therefore, the Almighty Being, 
who brought us into this life and has sustained us 
in mercy up to this hour, to abide with us unto 
the end. I invoke Him to bestow upon us the 
needful measure of grace that shall incline us to 
rej)entance of our sins and faith in His blessed 
Son, and to administer unto us all, at our departure 
from the earth, an abundant entrance into the 
kingdom of heaven. 



THE END. 



Cambridge : Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



